Post war rural household food security challenges, the case of Samre Woreda, Tigray region, Ethiopia

Abstract

In Ethiopia, food security remains as the major challenges where conflict and drought are the key driving reasons for food insecurity specifically, the war in Tigray has been significantly worsen the challenges of food security of rural households. Therefore, the study was conducted to assess the post war rural household food security status, challenges and coping strategies in Samre Woreda. Data were collected from three Tabia of the Woreda, using simple random sampling to select 372 rural households. The collected data were analyzed and presented using simple descriptive statistics. The result of the study pointed out that the post war food security status of the study area is very low, since the family member feed themselves, on average, two times per day, with an average household food requirement of 31.75kg per month for five members in the household. Besides, the majority 77.4% of respondents had no access to credit services during 2023/24 even after the conflict cool down. The result of this study also shows during the post war period conflict, drought and increasing food price are the major challenges of rural household food security ranked as first, second and third respectively. Involving on off-farm activities, food Aid and household asset selling were the coping strategies used as 1st, 2nd and 3rd respectively, by the rural households when they face food shortage. Hence, solving challenges on food security is the concern of many actors. It should be better if policy makers, concerned governmental organizations and NGOs place more emphases strengthening the extension and credit services to improve the productivity of rural households and to diversify their source of income like off farm activities. It is also recommendable to rehabilitate the war affected communities through immediate interventions