Informations et ressources scientifiques
sur le développement des zones arides et semi-arides

Titre : Food security in rural sub-Saharan Africa : a household level assessment of crop-livestock systems

Auteur : Fraval, Simon

Université de soutenance : Wageningen University

Grade : Doctor 2019

Résumé partiel
Members of rural households in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are both vulnerable to the health burdens that stem from food insecurity and central to improving the availability and affordability of wholesome foods. It has been estimated that chronic and hidden hunger can be alleviated by implementing a suite of nutrition-specific interventions at a cost of US\$9.6 billion per annum. This can be accelerated with complementary food system-based interventions. However, such interventions are hampered by a limited understanding of food security status and its associations with rural livelihoods. Therefore, the primary objective of this thesis was to describe, analyse and understand food security in rural landholding households in predominantly mixed crop-livestock agricultural systems of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The secondary objective was to improve the methodological basis of household level food security studies.

The rural household multi-indicator survey (RHOMIS) tool was developed to describe and analyse the circumstances of rural households. The RHOMIS tool aims to adhere to the principles of being time-efficient, utilitarian, user-friendly, flexible and reliable. The credibility, consistency and reliability of data collected using three different farm household surveys. The shorter and more targeted survey tool, RHOMIS, performed better in terms of staying within credible bounds. Measurements of maize yields and land area owned were found to be less reliable than other variables. Despite the limitations in data quality, our analysis shows that if the same farm households are followed over time, the sample sizes needed to detect substantial changes are in the order of hundreds of surveys, and not in the thousands.

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