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

The agriculture and food sector itself must make a radical and aggressive change in
the way it does business. This should start with an improved process in the formulation,
management, and administration of agricultural development plans, which should be based on
long-term vision. It should prioritize, plan and deploy its resources in a manner that can be
sustained over a longer-term horizon. The Government’s SDPRP is a starting point for this
type of approach. Quite a large number of challenges and possible approaches to resolve them
have been indicated in this document. Implementing these will go a long way to meeting the
main part of the nutrition security challenge; although one should accept the fact there is a lot
of room for improvement.
In Ethiopia, the policy focus is on production with an objective to eliminate import
dependence, particularly dependence on food aid (RDPS 2003). The three pillars that the
FDRE government food security strategy rests on are: (1) increase supply or availability of
food (2) improve access/entitlement to food; and (3) strengthen emergency response
capabilities (FSS 2002). Based on these pillars the objectives and interventions are also
explicitly obtained.
It is important to make clear the implications of Ethiopia’s food security strategy for
attaining nutritionally secure households and communities in different regions of the country.
Policymakers have to be aware that policies that affect the social conditions of production
also affect nutrition (Jonsson 1993). Jonsson argued that patterns of ownership and control of
the means of production vary considerably among societies. The different modes of
production – peasant, private farm, state, commercial, or cooperative – not only influence
what is being produced but also, to some extent, for whom.
Jonsson argued that the formulation of nutrition-oriented policy should avoid
equating malnutrition with inadequate aggregate production which, according to him, is the
assumption that many national food strategies are based on (Jonsson 1993). He also argued
that, except for drought stricken crisis areas, the correlation between malnutrition and food
production or even food availability is very low or non-existent. This implies that
policymakers should be careful that national food and agriculture strategies are nutritionoriented
and avoid an exclusive food-bias.
National food and nutrition policies and strategies need also to be cognizant of spatial
variations of nutrition and food problems within a country, both among regions and among
woredas within a region. Since the causes, intensity, and spatial mal-distribution of food
varies, policies targeted towards ecological and technological change may affect nutrition in
different ways across different contexts. At the national level, ecological causes may
dominate while at the village level; socioeconomic causes may be the most important
(Jonsson 1993). Deforestation and land erosion, imbalances between people, cattle, land, and
water resources affect nutrition. Too often, as Jonsson said, governments have not been aware
of this delicate balance and have adopted policies that have resulted in the gradual break
down of existing food and nutrition security systems.
3.7.2. Technical issues
3.7.2.1. Targeting children and adults
At community level, as Kaluski et al. reported, both children and adults are at risk of
malnutrition, and are in need of nutrition programs. Furthermore, enquiries into the poor
nutrition of Ethiopian children, and into the remarkable inter-regional and intra-household
differences found in nutrition outcomes, suggest that more work needs to be done in
investigating positive and negative feeding practices and their relationship to region and
culture (Robinson 2003).
Intra-household targeting is a very important concept of a nutrition-focused food
security approach at the household level. Targeting could benefit the most vulnerable
members of a family such as infants, children, and women. Women with the lowest weight at
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