An assessment of the causes of malnutrition in Ethiopia: A ...

3.1. Introduction
The economic growth and development of any nation depends on the use of its human
capacity, both physical and intellectual. Human capacity, to fully reach its personal and
economic potential, depends to a large degree on the individual’s nutrition security status. A
nutritionally secure people can fight poverty and pave the way to development. Ethiopia is not
an exception in this regard. Whether it is to achieve the Millennium Development Goals
(MDGs) or to efficiently and effectively implement the Sustainable Development and Poverty
Reduction Program (SDPRP), nutrition should be at the center, since a nation that is not
nutritionally secure achieves nothing in its socio-economic growth and development
undertakings. To put nutrition at the center of economic growth and development endeavors,
a well studied and formulated national nutrition policy and strategy is indispensable.
A National Nutrition Strategy (NNS) can address strategic issues of food, together
with maternal and child care, health services, and a healthy environment. Drafting such a
strategy for Ethiopia is a challenging task. Past attempts at formulating such strategies were
food-biased. Consequently, any new attempt has to prevail over the problem of
oversimplification that nutrition is exclusively a food issue and, hence, the belief that the
presence of a Food Security Strategy (FSS) is sufficient to address issues of nutrition in the
country. Even during the preparation of this technical report, this problem manifested during
consultation visits to regional bureaus associated with agricultural production and food
security. Several experts in these bureaus believe that if the food security strategy is fully
implemented in all aspects of its definition – availability, access, and utilization – then
malnutrition will be contained and the problem resolved. However, available data and indepth
discussion suggest that food security is not nutrition security. A food secure household
or community can be abjectly nutritionally insecure and be exposed to death due to
malnutrition.
Natural resources should be managed for the production of agricultural products.
Availability of agricultural products alone, however, may not ensure availability of adequate
and nutritionally sound food to households and communities. First, the available food must
also have an adequate dietary density. Secondly, adequate health servic es and a healthy
environment, together with adequate maternal and child care, are required for nutritionally
secure households and communities.
Four technical reports on key aspects of nutrition – food-security, care, and health, as
well as the basic macro-level determinants of nutritional status – were commissioned to lay
down the conceptual underpinnings for Ethiopia’s NNS. This report on food security is one of
the four. The report presents several normative and factual explanations to assert that a food
secure society may not necessarily be well-nourished, even if all components of food security
are fulfilled. A household achieves nutrition security only when it has secure access to food
coupled with a sanitary environment, adequate health services, and knowledgeable care to
ensure a healthy life for all household members (Benson 2005).
This study used a triple-A approach (Assessment-Analysis-Action) to address food
related nutrition issues and problems. The first part of the assessment, sections two and three,
deals with clarification of definitional and conceptual issues that have created confusion and
have led to the erroneous perception of nutrition as a food issue. Ethiopia’s natural resource
potentials and the actual situation in terms of feeding its growing population with an emphasis
on food and nutrition issues and nutritional indicators, both nationally and region-wide, is
assessed in sections four and five. Core policies and strategies, as well as programs related to
food security are reviewed in section six. The Agricultural Development Led Industrialization
(ADLI) strategy, the FSS, the Rural Development Policies and Strategies (RDPS), the
SDPRP, The New Coalition for Food Security (NCFS) and other related strategies and
programs are briefly reviewed and discussed in this section. Section seven presents the
nutrition gap and food-bias of the reviewed policy, strategy, and program documents,
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