Rural Development Studies

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Browsing Rural Development Studies by Subject "Absorptive Capacity"

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    A Doctoral Dissertation Submitted To the Center for Rural Development, College Of Development Studies, and Addis Ababa University
    (Addis Ababa University, 2019-06) Girmay, Gebrerufael; Seyoum, Abrham
    Food security analysis has concentrated in and limited to estimation of vulnerability of households to food insecurity and calculations of food deficits. This focus on vulnerability of households to food insecurity has led to aid dependent food security strategy and proliferation of development agencies providing humanitarian aid. The humanitarian experiences and food aid provisions to Ethiopia alone proves the failure of the vulnerability literature and its food aid policy version to empower food aid recipients. This conceptual gap enabled scholars to introduce the concept of resilience to food security literature. This dissertation intends to study resilience of rural households to food insecurity. It examines livelihood asset endowments of households and their multidimensional food security status as well as their resilience capacity to adverse livelihood outcomes. The study adopts sustainable livelihood and resilience integrated framework. The integrated framework emphasizes the necessity of resilience capacity of households which heavily relies on their access to and control over livelihood assets mediated by conversion factors to pursue certain livelihood strategies to reduce food insecurity. Crosssectional survey study was conducted in six proportionately selected Kebeles of Ahferom Wereda, Central Zone of Tigray National Regional State. The primary data were gathered from systematically selected 400 rural households using pre-tested semi-structured questionnaire. Descriptive and multivariate techniques were employed to analyze the quantitative data. Qualitative data were also used to substantiate and support the quantitative data findings. The livelihood asset endowments of households were estimated using asset index. Asset indices close to zero imply low asset endowment while index scores close to one imply high asset endowment of households. The aggregate asset endowment analysis revealed that the households, on average, had 0.127 asset stock. This small asset stock indicates that the households are vulnerable to multitude of natural and manmade shock factors and undesirable livelihood outcomes. The disaggregate livelihood asset endowment analysis reveals that human capital and social assets are relatively abundant in the study area. Financial capital is the least readily available livelihood asset in the area. The study revealed that the credit households borrowed from formal and informal institutions is ineffective to reduce food insecurity of households due to inappropriate usage and high interest rate in the area. It explicitly calls for the introduction of financial asset package, and tight monitoring and follow up mechanisms. The analysis further calls for broad-based infrastructure development, rural electrification, alternative energy supply as well as secondary and preparatory school expansion. vii The multidimensional food security analysis reveals that none of the households in the area are multi-dimensionally food secure. This complete absence of multi-dimensionally food secure households in the area portrays that the existing structures and processes are not enabling them to convert the livelihood resources they are endowed with into desirable [food secure] livelihood outcomes. The study found out that almost all of the studied households were multidimensionally [mildly] food insecure in the survey time. This high mild food insecurity prevalence demonstrates that a small deviation in reduced agricultural production and reduction in the long-term productive safety-net program could push a significant percentage of households into moderate or severe food insecurity condition. The finding of multidimensional food security analysis calls for modernization of agricultural input supply system, institutional restructuring and agricultural technology generation and innovation to transform the smallholder agriculture and revolt the overall economy. Resilience of households to food insecurity here refers to the ability of those households to maintain certain level of food security in the shock-prone area. It is a latent variable made up of multiple indicators (or components). The aggregate resilience capacity analysis indicates that half of the sampled households were resilient while the rest were less resilient. The separate analysis of resilience dimensions reveals that social capital and adaptive capacity are relatively abundant in the area. They have conversely limited access to basic services and foods. It also confirmed that gender disparity undermines resilience capacity of households where male headed households were more resilient than their counterparts. This is backed up by the descriptive analysis that indicates half of the multidimensionality food insecure households were resilient to food insecurity. The analysis indicates that the resilience capacity of households decreases with increasing food insecurity measured by HFIAS. Similarly, over half of the multi-dimensionally (mildly) food insecure households have high resilient capacity. The study infers that food insecure households are not necessarily fragile. This implies that food security studies without due resilience capacity analysis do not provide the true picture of livelihood condition of households