Food security is a complex concept that may mean to have regular access to adequate and sufficient food and basic necessities for ones household, through purchasing or production. Many papers published on food security in Africa, have claimed that Africans are generally food insecure and undernourished and have identified the causes as failures in social system that enable food production, distribution or access. These problems and possible solutions on African food insecurity matters have been summarised qualitatively but poignantly as follows:
“Africa has continued to suffer from hunger not due to vagaries of weather or adverse climate but because of corrupt leaders, said former Ugandan president Godfrey Binaisa. Donor funds for agricultural improvement are diverted into individuals’ personal funds leaving the majority of Africans perpetually hungry.”Source: D Mfugale (The Guardian 10th April 2004)
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Estimating levels of food insecurity:
There are many reports that describe food security qualitatively, but very few attempts have been made to quantify the levels of food security or insecurity. Quantitatively measuring the level of food security for each household, community or country could help to gauge the level of insecurity, that may also help making comparisons, planning and targeting resources to those most in need. In this paper attempts have been made to achieve an assessment of food insecurity in a quantitative and comparative manner.
Estimations based on income:
Stacey Rosen and Shahla Shapouri (US Department of Agriculture Washington, DC, USA) suggested a method of quantifying food insecurity by proposing a ratio of income to the food security threshold. Food security threshold is the sum of the cost of a basic food basket and that of basic necessities. When this sum exceeds income then there exists food insecurity.
Estimations based on Daily diet:
It may also be possible to assess the level of food insecurity based food consumed as daily diet from the available values of nutrient content (NC) in food products and the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) figures. A ratio (NC)/(RDA) can be generated for each food product. The ratio represents the proportion of the RDA per unit weight of food product. Soybean protein content, for example, is 43g/100 (NC=0.43), and the RDA for protein is 56g/day for an adult (70Kg), so 130g of soybean will contain 56g that is 100% RDA. For the protein in soybean the ratio (NC)/(RDA) is 0.0076785 (approximated to 0.008) that represents the fraction of protein RDA in a unit weight of soybean. From the weight of any food ingredient consumed, the proportion of RDA can be calculated by multiplying that weight by the ratio to give daily diet (DD) values. These values that can be added for all food products in the meals of the day.
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