Conflict and households’ acute food insecurity: evidences from the ongoing war in Tigrai-Northern Ethiopia

Abstract

The paper examines the effect of war on food insecurity in Tigrai using data from 3245 households. The calorie intake approach and the Integrated Food Insecurity Phase Classification (IPC) were applied to measure the level of food insecurity and classify the phases. The logistic regression model was applied to identify the factors affecting food insecurity in Tigrai. The empirical result revealed that 77.38% of the households are food insecure with a calorie deficiency gap of 33.68 and 69.21% of them are classified in crisis phase and above. The war has caused the level of food insecurity and share of crisis phase and above to upsurge by 153.8 and 49.7%, respectively. It is also shown that conflict, price of commonly consumable cereals, age of the head, family size, support (aid), and access to electricity and financial services are affecting the level of food insecurity in the region. To cope with the war-induced shortage of food, households reduced the quality and quantity of food they consumed, sold off livestock and assets, used their savings, requested support from family, NGOs, and the government, ate inedible green leaves, migration, and begging.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Tigray is one of the regions in Ethiopia located in the Northern tip of the country. The war in Tigray, which started on 4 November 2021, destroyed the economic, social, political, and environmental landscape and aggravated the level of food insecurity in the region.

• 77.38% of the households are food insecure and the calorie deficiency gap is estimated at 33.69 and 69.29% of the households need urgent lifesaving support. The war increased the number of food-insecure households by more than 153% and the number of catastrophe households by more than 87%.

• The severe food insecurity is a man-made famine where the Ethiopian and Eritrean government military forces and the Amhara ‘fano’ and militia have destroyed all the economic bases of the households; looting cereals, livestock, assets of the people, burning crops, slaughtering livestock, blocking humanitarian assistant, total and partial blockage of electricity, banking services, and others.

Keywords:

• Conflict
• food insecurity
• IPC
• logistic regression
• Tigrai
• war

JEL CLASSIFICATION CODES:

• I30
• I32
• I38
• P46

REVIEWING EDITOR:

• Joe Thomas, Institute of Health and Management, Australia

SUBJECTS:

• Economic Psychology
• Health Psychology
• Testing, Measurement and Assessment
• Social Psychology
• Economics
• Urban Economics
• Food Laws & Regulations

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Tigrai Institute of Policy studies (TIPS) for providing the data necessary for the study. We are also grateful for those who participated in editing, reviewing, and providing their genuine comments. All views raised in this paper are the opinion of the authors and do not reflect the interest of the TIPS.

Author contributions

Teka Araya has initiated the research topic, and developed the questionnaire and FGD, KII, and PRA discussion points. He has also dealt with model specification and carried out the analysis. Sung-Kyu Lee worked on the organization of the paper, editing, reviewing, and proofreading. Besides, he has checked the appropriateness of the model used and the relevance of the topic for the rehabilitation of Tigrai.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Tabia is lower government’s administrative structure below the Woreda.

2 There were three rounds of wars in Tigray and this study assessed the impact of the first-round war.

3 All woredas in the Western zone are insecure and inaccessible during the data collection. Representative data were collected from the Internally Displaced People (IDP) of the zone who are residing in Shire and Mekelle city and treated as IDP in the analysis.

4 Information is gathered form the Ethiopian defense force and the interim government of Tigray.

5 First-level outcomes refer to ‘characteristics of food consumption and livelihood change. Thresholds that correspond as closely as possible to the Phase description are included for each indicator. Although cut-offs are based on applied research and presented as global reference, correlation between indicators is often somewhat limited and findings need to be contextualized. The area is classified in the most severe Phase that affects at least 20% of the population’ (IPC Global Partner, 2019).

6 A logit model is applicable for qualitative binary variables that have two outcomes, i.e. $y=1$ if the household is food secure and $y=0$ if the household is food insecure.

7 Providing food aid based on the family size and the required quantity of cereals, pulses, and oil.

8 The monetary value of assets damaged in the war was used as a proxy variable to measure conflict.

9 We treated marital status as married and unmarried (dummy). The single, divorced and widowed were considered as unmarried.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Teka Araya

Teka Araya is an Assistant Lead Researcher at the Tigrai Institute of Policy Studies (TIPS). His research areas include poverty analysis, income distribution, development policy, welfare economics, institutional and social change economics, labor studies, industrial and agricultural productivity, environmental policy studies, regional economic policy analysis, risks and uncertainty, malnutrition, maternal care, and public health among others. The research paper contributes to the existing literature on conflict and food insecurity and points out areas of intervention to improve the households’ level of food security in war-torn areas.

Sung-Kyu Lee

Sung-Kyu Lee is a Professor at the Department of International Trade at Andong National University in Korea. He obtained his PhD degree in Economics from the University of Southampton, U.K. He was a Fiscal Policy Analyst of National Assembly Budget Office in Korea. He has been a chief editor of Review of Institution and Economics published by ‘Korea Institution and Economics Association’ and also a chief editor of Korean Journal of Public Choice Economics issued by ‘Korea Center for Public Choice Study’. He is a Director of ‘Korea Center for Public Choice Study’ and a Director of ‘Mancur Olson Institute’. He is also an Editorial Board member of the Journal of Contemporary Management in Canada. His main research field is public finance, public choice, development economics, and institutional economics. He is the author of Theory of International Trade (in Korean), International Trade and Strategic Trade Policy (in English), Political Economy of Tax Policy and International Taxation (in English), and Essays on Probabilistic Voting, Policy and Campaigning (in English). Recently, he published “The impact of agricultural package programs on farm productivity in Tigray, Ethiopia: Panel data estimation” along with Araya Teka in Cogent Economics & Finance (2019), and “Resurrecting the Industrial Policy as Development Policy based on Korean Experiences: Towards a Pro-market Industrial Policy” with Jwa Sung-Hee in World Economics (2019).