Investigating the Dynamics and Trends of Sustainable Food Systems in Ethiopia: Characterizing the National Performance within the Global Context

Abstract

This paper assesses the trends of Sustainable Food System in Ethiopia, and how the various indicators evolved over time in the four food system dimensions: environmental, economic, social, and food and nutrition security. We employed quartile analysis to evaluate the relative performance of Ethiopia vis-à-vis the rest of the world by grouping the latter into lower quartile, median, and upper quartile based on their performance. The result revealed that while some positive strides have been achieved in reducing poverty headcount ratio over the past two decades, a high proportion of stunting and undernourishment, high variability of food supply, the slow-onset of adult obesity, and poor access to basic facilities for food utilization, especially when compared to the countries in the lower, median and upper quartiles, remain to be formidable challenges calling for the attention of policymakers.