Food Insecurity Classification in Rural Areas of Mozambique: An Integrated Analysis of Survey-Based Indicators

ABSTRACT

National food insecurity early warning systems and food policy interventions need reliable information concerning the classification of food insecurity. The aim of this paper was to produce an acute food insecurity classification in Mozambique, by: i) analyzing food insecurity indicators individually; ii) comparing it with a new integrated analysis of survey-based indicators called the “Matrix Analysis.” The Matrix results show more severe classifications than the single indicators for the analyzed districts. The matrix novelty consists on a cross-tabulation of all indicators, allowing a less subjective analysis. Further research is needed on how the Matrix approach could complement national classification systems.

KEYWORDS:

• Food consumption score (FCS)
• household hunger scale (HHS)
• integrated food security phase classification (IPC)
• livelihood coping (LHC)
• reduced coping strategies index (rCSI)

Acknowledgments

This study took place in the framework of the project FEMOZ⁶ (“Strengthening the Resilience of Food Environments in the Context of Disaster Risk and Climate Change in MOZambique”). The project and the present paper were supported by funds of the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) based on a decision of the Parliament of the Federal Republic of Germany via the Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (BLE) under the innovation support programme.”

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/03670244.2024.2316590

Notes

1. https://www.ipcinfo.org/ipc-country-analysis/details-map/en/c/1155342/?iso3=MOZ

2. Consumption matrix results for all districts are summarized in Table 6. Detailed Tables with respective standard errors can be provided on request. In this paper only the consumption/livelihood strategies matrices are presented in the Supplementary Materials.

3. The classifications from SETSAN/IPC are accessible directly from the IPC website: https://www.ipcinfo.org/ipc-country-analysis/details-map/en/c/1155342/?iso3=MOZ

4. https://www.ipcinfo.org/ipc-country-analysis/details-map/en/c/1155342/?iso3=MOZ

5. https://www.ipcinfo.org/ipc-country-analysis/details-map/en/c/1155342/?iso3=MOZ

6. https://www.femoz.de/

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Bundesanstalt für Landwirtschaft und Ernährung [2820FENV03].