Abstract

Food insecurity remains high in Africa, despite the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of ending hunger and achieving food security by 2030. According to UNICEF (2024), one out of eleven people in the world have faced hunger in 2023, while the ratio pick up to one out of five in Africa and is increasing over time. Similarly, according to (Crises, 2025), over 295 million people (22.6%) in 53 countries included in the Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC) faced high levels of acute food insecurity in 2024. Four African countries – Nigeria, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Ethiopia – are among the top five countries with the largest number of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity, in descending order.
In this study we explore the impact of armed conflict on food security using two waves of data (2019 and 2023) from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and geo-coded armed conflict events from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED). We measure food security in the main estimations using the Food Consumption Score (FCS) and Household Dietary Diversity Index (HDDI), while alternative measures are used for robustness checks. Exposure to armed conflict is measured using occurrences of battle events within a 15km radius of the place of residence of households. A substantial increment in the number of conflicts in Ethiopia between the baseline survey (2019) and end-line survey (2023) allows us to employ the difference-in-differences (DiD) estimation approach for a better identification.
Our results show that exposure to armed conflict has large and statistically significant adverse effects on food security. More specifically, exposure to armed conflict leads to 9.9- and 0.65-point reduction in Food Consumption Score (FCS) and Household Dietary Diversity Index (HDDI), respectively. This translates to a 28% and 13% reduction in FCS and HDDI among those exposed to armed conflict, respectively. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that male-headed households are relatively more food insecure than female-headed households, with 5 and 4.3 percentage point differences in the mean deviations of FCS and HDDI, respectively. On the other hand, exposure to armed conflict is statistically significant in affecting the food security of rural residents. The key mechanisms that link armed conflict and food security are found to include loss of productive assets and underuse of agricultural land. Though it is common that armed conflict leads to contemporaneous food insecurity and humanitarian assistance, its short- and intermediate-term impact on food (in)security is not obvious. Therefore, our findings highlight the persistent adverse impact of armed conflict on food security that requires extended post-conflict support and rehabilitation.
This paper also contributes to the literature on adverse events and their consequences on the livelihoods of people. Manmade and natural adverse events such as conflicts and weather shocks contribute to the socio-economic well-being of individuals. Rainfall shock is found to adversely affect the health, education, and other socio-economic outcomes of victims (Abiona, 2017; Adhvaryu et al., 2024; Maccini and Yang, 2009). Similarly, various studies revealed the impact of exposure to famine on the mental and physical development of individuals (Ampaabeng & Tan, 2013; Dercon & Porter, 2014; Kesternich et al., 2015). Related to our study is the effect of exposure to conflict or war on the socio-economic outcomes. The study by Singhal (2019) shows the adverse effect of early life war experience on mental health. Other studies also show the negative association between battle conflict and health outcomes (Akresh et al., 2012; Minoiu & Shemyakina, 2012). This study extends this literature by exploring the impact of armed conflict on a household’s food security status.
Studying the link between armed conflict and food insecurity in the context of Africa, where both are escalating, is worthwhile. As indicated above, the largest number of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity are present in Africa, and the trend is not declining. Similarly, armed conflict is the highest and on the rise in Africa. In 2023, of the total armed conflicts that occurred globally, more than half of them were in Africa (Obermeier & Rustad, 2023). Ethiopia is among the countries with the highest prevalence of armed conflict and its adverse effects on the livelihoods of people. For instance, in 2022, over 204,000 people were killed due to state-based violence, with the largest numbers resulting from the wars in Ethiopia and Ukraine (Davies et al., 2023). Using Ethiopia as a case study, therefore, provides a suitable setup to investigate the links between armed conflict and food security. In recent decades, Ethiopia was hailed as one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies, with marked progress in poverty reduction and infrastructure expansion. However, this trajectory was severely disrupted by the outbreak of armed conflict between Ethiopia’s federal government and the Tigray regional administration on November 4, 2020 (Abay et al., 2023a).