FAC Working Paper 80. Graduation from the Food Security Programme in Ethiopia: FAC Ethiopia Final Report

Abstract

The Government of Ethiopia launched the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) in 2005. The overarching objective of the FSP was to break Ethiopia’s chronic dependence on annual emergency appeals for humanitarian assistance, by providing structured support to food insecure households over an extended period. The initial expectation was that the numbers of PSNP participants would fall over time as households achieved food security and no longer needed programme support. In reality, the numbers increased due to several shocks that increased food insecurity in rural Ethiopia, such as food price spikes and rain failures. This highlights the challenge of ‘graduating’ households out of chronic food insecurity in a fragile agro-ecological context characterised by dependence on rain-fed agriculture but with highly variable rainfall. This study aims to add to the understanding of how graduation is happening in Ethiopia through the Food Security Programme. It analyses the range of factors that ‘enable’ and ‘constrain’ graduation at different levels, from programme design and implementation to participants’ or beneficiaries’ characteristics, to contextual factors such as market access and climate variability.

Citation

Devereux, S.; Sabates-Wheeler, R.; Taye, M.T.; Sabates, R.; Sima, F. FAC Working Paper 80. Graduation from the Food Security Programme in Ethiopia: FAC Ethiopia Final Report. Future Agricultures Consortium, Brighton, UK (2014) 26 pp.

FAC Working Paper 80. Graduation from the Food Security Programme in Ethiopia: FAC Ethiopia Final Report

Published 1 January 2014