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

3.5.4. Core programs and projects
The core program of Ethiopia’s FSS is the Food Security Program (FSP), which is
now being implemented by the Federal Food Security Bureau, under MOARD. The five-year
goal of this program is to attain food security for five million chronically food insecure
people, while improving and sustaining the overall food security of an additional ten million
people (NCFS 2003). To achieve this goal, the program has four broad areas of coverage with
inter-linked objectives. These are (a) increased availability of food through improved crop
and livestock production, (b) increased access to food through expanded agricultural and nonagricultural
incomes, (c) promotion of preventive and curative health services, and (d)
improved access to land through voluntary resettlement for up to 440,000 chronically food
insecure households. Conditional transfers within safety net programs are used as one
approach to improve food access. The first three areas (a-c) are linked to the major capacity
building effort and inter-linked by the enhanced extension system that is also designed to
support a community-based, multi-annual planning approach that, among other things, aims
to mainstream health issues.
According to the FSP, availability of food through improved crop and livestock
production aims at improved conservation and use of soil moisture; soil conservation; crop
diversification, specialization, and intensification; strengthened extension services; improved
feed and water availability; and implementing pastoralist-specific modalities. The increase of
agricultural and non-agricultural income is expected also to be achieved via the use of
enhanced safety net programs; promoting household income diversification; enhanced market
effectiveness; improved knowledge, attitudes, skills, and practices; and through establishing
and strengthening appropriate micro-finance institutions.
The promotion of preventive and curative health care component of FSP is setup to
address the food utilization aspect of the FSS. In the FSP, food utilization means ensuring
good nutritional outcomes (NFSC 2003). It recognizes that nutritional outcomes are
dependent on not only improved food availability and access, but also on the health status of
the individual.
Thus far, through the safety net intervention, feeder roads constructed through food
for work or cash for work have played an important role in connecting kebele population
centers to woreda or zonal towns, at least during the dry season. They bring farm inputs, aid
materials, and other inputs closer to the villages and bring farm products to large towns. Of
course, food or cash for work programs are expected to diminish gradually as the problem of
food insecurity, hunger, and poverty is alleviated through sustainable and rapid agricultural
production and overall economic growth of the country. Once there is no longer need for cash
or food for work project, the Road Sector Development Program should take responsibility
for constructing new feeder roads and upgrading those roads that were constructed through
food or cash for work. Until then, constructing feeder roads through food or cash for work
likely will prevail, although the road sector can help in improving the quality of roads
constructed by providing technical assistance to the food of cash for work road projects.
Most of the time degraded, disaster, and drought affected woredas lie in lowland
pastoral areas of the Eastern part of the country. Hence, interventions in the safety net and
emergency programmes targeting livestock production and productivity are divided in to two
major sub-systems, the mixed farming and the pastoralists, in order to place sufficient
emphasis on the specific activities that characterize these two systems.
The voluntary resettlement sub-program is one of the core components of the national
FSP. The resettlement program has been initiated by government in response to the chronic
food shortages faced by millions of Ethiopian. Given the target of enabling up to 440,000
chronically food insecure households attain food security through improved access to land,
about 45,000 households were resettled voluntarily in Amhara, Oromia, and Tigray regions in
the year 2002/03. Interventions that create community assets through labor-based public
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