CHAPTER 1: FOOD SECURITY AND HOUSEHOLD RESILIENCE
1.6 The Framework for African Food Security‟s Score Card
Section 1.1 provides a brief overview of past attempts to measure food insecurity and shows that the existing measures are limited by the complexity and multidimensionality of the concept of food security. The concept of food security includes the future - both those groups
23 that are currently food insecure and those that are vulnerable to becoming food insecure need to be considered. Many of the food security measurement tools are static and fail to capture the dynamic nature of food security. From section 1.1 it can be concluded that it is impossible to measure food security in its entirety. Section 1.2 shows that, while progress towards reducing world poverty and hunger has been made, these problems are still of serious concern. Section 1.3 argues that the risks faced by vulnerable households play a role in perpetuating poverty and that an improvement in household risk management and the ability to cope with risk (resilience) can reduce vulnerability and food insecurity. The FAFS recognizes the importance of resilience and risk management as they „protect‟ the household from vulnerability to food insecurity. If the resilience of households can be understood and gauged, it is then possible to provide, protect and promote resilience at all levels.
The FAFS seeks to reduce food insecurity and poverty by increasing the resilience of vulnerable populations in Africa. The FAFS sets out four key objectives that contribute to the goal of improving the resilience of vulnerable populations and reducing poverty and food insecurity in Africa (NEPAD, 2009). The objectives are: (1) improved risk management, (2) increased supply of affordable commodities through increased production and improved market linkages, (3) increased economic opportunities for the vulnerable and (4) improved quality of diets through diversification of food among the target groups.
Considering the limitations of existing food security measurement methods, the FAFS identifies four indicators, rather than a measure, as a means of tracking progress towards improved household resilience and reduced food insecurity. The FAFS objectives and indicators are brought together in the FAFS score card as shown in Figure 1.3. The first row of the figure shows the FAFS first element of improving risk management and resilience. The indicator of progress towards this goal is shown as a resilience score. The aim is to track changes in the four indicators to show improvement or otherwise in household resilience and food insecurity through country programmes and interventions (Hendriks, 2010). The FAFS score card focuses on tracking progress towards food security goals rather than trying to develop an ineffective composite measure of food security.
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Figure 1.3: The FAFS score card Source: NPCA (2011)
Now: DD/MM/YY
FAFS element Indicator Critical level
Percentage of population below
critical level
-10 0 +10
Improving risk management and resilience
Resilience score (based on
assets) Needs to be country-specific ______%
Increasing the supply of affordable food
Consumption + production – gifts, donations and transfers
Spend > 60% of total household budget expenditure on food
______%
Increasing economic opportunities for the vulnerable
Per capita income $1.25 per person per day ______%
Improving dietary diversity Dietary diversity score Needs to be country-specific ______%
Main source of food Food comes from own production or purchases
Apart from gifts, food comes from own production or purchases
______%
Malnutrition rates Number of stunted children
< 5 years
Z-score for the ratio of weight-
for-age is ≤ -2 std deviations ______%
Number of wasted children
< 5 years
Z-score for the ratio of weight- for-height is ≤ -2 std
deviations
______%
Progress towards goal
25 This study focuses on the first objective of the FAFS which is improved risk management. At the household, community and national levels, improved household risk management will help to strengthen national, regional and community responses to climatic and economic shocks. The indicator identified, by the FAFS, as a measure of progress towards this objective is a resilience score. This score is not, as yet, presented in more detail in the FAFS score card and it is the goal of this research to add to the FAFS score card by elaborating on this indicator. The study aims to develop a resilience score and in doing so to contribute to the overall CAADP goals and objectives. Specifically, this investigation seeks to refine and apply an asset index to a number of African countries as an indicator of a household‟s resilience and its ability to manage risk and respond efficiently and quickly to shocks and crises to ensure rapid recovery. The measure could be valuable to policy-makers for identifying vulnerable households and to assess the impacts of new policies on such households.
The use of assets as a risk management tool is documented by, amongst others, Dercon (2001) where he discusses the importance of assets in determining the ability of a household or individual to cope with hardship. He concludes that asset ownership can be used as an indication of the ability of a household or individual to cope with shocks. Similarly, Lovendal and Knowles (2005) explain that asset management is used to stabilize purchasing power or consumption ability. Asset ownership can be used as a proxy for the ability of a household or individual to withstand shocks; the level of access to, or ownership of, assets influences the ability to prevent or cope with shocks (Lovendal & Knowles, 2005). Tracking changes in household asset ownership over time would indicate trends in household resilience and vulnerability and show progress towards food security goals.
The first objective of the study is to construct and apply an asset-based index of household SES using household data collected through the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) for a number of African countries to identify households with low resilience. This involves the selection of relevant variables for inclusion in the index, appropriate weighting of the chosen variables and application of the index to household data so as to calculate a resilience score for each of the sample households. The households can then be classified into groups (quintiles) based on the value of the resilience score. From a review of literature it was shown that asset indices, as a measure of household wealth or SES, are widely applied (see Chapter 2) and that the use of linear PCA in the construction of such asset-based indices is well established. However, there is some uncertainty in the literature regarding the reliability of
26 linear PCA for such purposes. For this reason, it was decided to compare four methods of constructing asset-based indices in an attempt to develop the index most appropriate for estimating a household‟s SES score as an indicator of its resilience. The second objective of the study is to apply the new index to household data from several African countries over two different time periods to determine whether the measure could be used to monitor progress towards improved household risk management.
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