Head, Urban Food Security & Safety net Office
head ,urban food security & safety net office
Introduction
According to the State of Food and Nutrition Security in the World (2020), almost 690 million people, or approximately 9% of the global population, did not have enough food or were “undernourished” in 2019. Urban regions have typically been considered as having fewer food insecurity issues than rural places, which may be accurate if merely providing enough food was critical. Food is generally abundant and available in various forms in urban areas, from fresh to prepared to package, and in various retail outlets ranging from traditional markets to corner shops to high-end supermarkets, as well as from local and international formal and informal restaurants and fast food chains. However, abundance does not imply that everyone has equal access to nutritional foods or safe, diversified, healthy, and inexpensive diets (Ruel, Citation2020).
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development puts forward a transformational vision, recognizing that our world is changing, bringing with it new challenges that must be overcome if we are to live in a world without hunger, food insecurity, and malnutrition in any of its forms (FAO, Citation2019). More than 820 million people worldwide are still hungry today, underscoring the immense challenge of achieving the Zero Hunger target by 2030.
Despite overwhelming evidence of rising urbanization in the Global South, the hidden catastrophe of urban food insecurity remains marginal at all regional and local levels (Crush & Riley, Citation2019). Rising food prices exacerbate food instability (FAO, Citation2019) and the bulk of inhabitants in cities rely on the market (exchange economies) to get food (Crush & Frayne, Citation2010). As a result, these city dwellers are impoverished; the majority are socially disadvantaged and underserved regarding infrastructure and institutional assistance. The issue is also supported by the work of various researchers, who note that much of the present literature on food security in Africa has concentrated on the rural poor, with little attention paid to the urban poor, whose livelihoods are as vulnerable (Crush & Riley, Citation2019). Food insecurity in Ethiopia has exacerbated the country’s already precarious economy, mainly rural-urban migration, by increasing indolent people in many towns. Urban population growth (annual %) in Ethiopia was reported at 4.6 % in 2021, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators compiled from officially recognized sources (UN, Citation2018). With this growth rate, Ethiopia’s urban population will exceed 50 million by 2025.
Developing nations have lately seen faster urbanization than industrialized countries, with an average annual rate of change in an urban population of 2.34 and 0.50 percent for 2018., (UN Citation2018). According to the same U.N. assessment, by 2050, around 67% of the developing world and 87% of the developed world will be urbanized. Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populated country after Nigeria, had a total population of 96.5 million in 2018, with 20.8 percent living in metropolitan areas (CSA, Citation2017). Urbanization is a relatively new phenomenon in Ethiopia. While it is lower than the norm for African countries (21 percent vs. 37 percent; WFP-Ethiopia, Citation2009). Its yearly pace of expansion (4.6 percent) is quicker than the continent’s (4 percent) existing metropolitan centers are growing while new ones are sprouting up.
The Amhara region, formerly known as Region 3, has a population of over 21 million, with roughly 12.3% living in cities (2021 est). More than 44.4% of the overall population of the region is impoverished (earning less than a dollar daily), making the region’s food security situation more hazardous than the national average (37%) (UNDP Ethiopia, Citation2018).
Even though Ethiopia has enormous natural resources, most of its socio-economic metrics are severely poor. As a result, chronic and transitory food insecurity is prevalent and severe in the country’s rural and urban areas (FAO, Citation2014). Like many developing countries, Ethiopia’s food security and vulnerability evaluations have traditionally focused on rural areas. However, several pieces of research in the sector have focused on the country’s rural areas (Aragie & Genanu, Citation2017; Hussein & Janekarnkij, Citation2013; Yehuala et al., Citation2018), to name a few. However, such incomplete assessments do not verify realities at the ground level and mask the country’s genuine urban food insecurity problem. Furthermore, such studies do not investigate the fundamental causes of household food insecurity in specific regional urban settings.
Food insecurity varies by location, socio-economic status, and living circumstances. As a result, researching food insecurity in major regional cities is difficult. The findings may provide insight into development planners’ efforts to fight the problem at the local level. Urban food security is receiving special attention since ensuring national food security is one of the cornerstones of the country’s long-term economic development and poverty reduction (UNDP Ethiopia, Citation2018).
A closing discussion describes high-level trends and under-researched areas of food security in Ethiopia, according to a systematic review based on 267 articles linked to food security in Ethiopia (Cochrane, Citation2019). Such a fast shift of civilization to urban settings has resulted in food insecurity affecting significant cities in the Amhara region and Ethiopia. Food insecurity has distinct consequences in cities. That is why the study is interested in investigating the status and determinants of food security that will add to the knowledge in emerging large cities of the Amhara Region.
Ethiopia originally developed a food security policy in 1996 and launched a food security program in 1998 (FDRE, Citation2002). However, food insecurity and undernutrition have been critical societal issues since then. As a result, knowledge about the subject in the studied region is scarce. When we reviewed local literature, many used caloric intake and the household food insecurity access scale (HFIAS), and others used either the Household Hunger Scale (HHS) or the Household Food Consumption Score (FCS) independently, which could not help to identify specific realities and depth of the issue in emerging regional cities. Several studies in Ethiopia have primarily focused on food availability and access (Asenso-okyere et al., Citation2013; Beyene, Citation2016; Gezimu Gebre, Citation2012; Motbainor et al., Citation2016; Wolderufael, Citation2015), while others used a 24-hour or seven-day recall approach to capture the food dimension (Fekadu & Mequanent, Citation2010) who classified into two. However, this study uses the FGT Index to assess the status, depth, and severity of food insecurity and what variables influence households’ food insecurity in the research region in rising big towns of Amhara regional states’ focusing on Bahir Dar and Gondar
