Impact Evaluation of the Food Security Project for Poorer Rural Households in Ethiopia 2010

At the time of Appraisal of the Food Security Project, Ethiopia was a post-conflict state having just emerged from a two-year long armed conflict with Eritrea. Though the conflict resulted in a suspension of development assistance, an Interim Strategy Note (ISN) was put in place in November 2000 to guide the World Bank’s post-conflict recovery program. This ISN guided much of the strategy for the Food Security Project’s design. District governments, or woredas, were largely responsible for delivering services. Though the agricultural sector remained underemployed, it was still the largest sector of the economy, meaning there was little opportunity outside rural areas for non-farming activities. Poor rural households also lacked sufficient access to the microfinance sector. Droughts and food price escalation caused massive food insecurity for around 7-13 million people. The Food Security Project (FSP) wanted to shift assistance focus away from short term temporary fixes toward addressing long-term problems of food insecurity. The FSP was designed to comprise 5 components: (i) grants to communities and kebeles, including community-level assets building, household asset building and income generating activities, and child growth promotion; (ii) capacity building for woredas, regions, and federal ministries; (iii) food marketing initiatives, including improved management of food aid, establishment of a food market information system, development of a warehouse receipt and inventory credit system for traders, and development of a competitive and efficient market in warehousing services; (iv) communications and public education; and (v) project administration and impact evaluation. While these components were edited before the culmination of the project, they generally remained. The project development objective was to build the resource base of poorer rural households, increase their employment and incomes, and improve their nutrition levels, especially for children under five years of age, pregnant and lactating women. A major benefit of FSP participation is access to credit. Documented outcomes included: (i) small increase in the number of months FSP households were food secure and a small decrease in number of months of food consumption covered by own resources; (ii) positive effect on caregivers’ knowledge of and behavior regarding child nutrition; (iii) FSP households slightly less likely to have had at least one shock in the last five years and less likely to have used savings or a loan to buy food; and (iv) FSP households reported an increase of off-farm work.