Reviewing the deployment of multiple indicators at micro-level food in/security investigations in Eastern Africa: Evidence from Ethiopia

Abstract

Food security has remained on the common and alive agenda of scholars and actors globally. Particularly, in developing countries with a large number and rapid growth of populations, attaining food security is found to be a challenging duty. Overall, this work has aimed to provide information on the deployment of multiple food security indicators and food insecurity drivers in the investigations conducted on food in/security statuses at a micro-level in Ethiopia. A systematic literature review was conducted where a total of 132 pieces of literature were reviewed. An attempt was exerted to look into food in/security-related approaches and the commonly discoursed pillars. Apart from this, the empirical findings of academics on the issues targeted were perused wherein the inclusion of regularly conversed food security pillars was checked through respective indicators of food in/security at household or community levels regardless of the agroecological and settlement disparities. The review findings disclosed that the majority of the existing studies deployed either single or combined indicators of food in/security using households/communities as a unit of analysis where the major food security pillars were not fully addressed. This condition does not show all pillars of food security to be attained despite the objective-driven investigations of various contributors. Hence, the review findings call for the deployment of multiple food security indicators which potentially would reveal the major food security dimensions at a household and/or community level since a single non-holistic indicator is deemed not to capture the basic food security dimensions and insights regularly acknowledged.