Declaration<sup>9</sup> by countries in East Africa, the region most affected by drought famines, in September 2011 to enhance regional and international partnership to end drought emergencies in the Horn of Africa<sup>10</sup> . In order for a country to ensure the food security of its citizens, it is imperative for the country to develop its capacity to estimate its food needs from its own production, inventories and if necessary from imports and international food aid. However, ensuring food security is a complex task in assessing in real time the quantity of agriculture production in order to maintain an adequate national level inventory to supplement agricultural production to meet the country’s food need at times when there is a shortfall in production.

However, food security is not just about availability of food. The other aspects of food security (FAO 2008) are accessibility (is the food economically and physically accessible?), utilization (how safely is the food used to meet the nutrition requirements?) and stability (how are the long‐term trends in each of the three factors?). Therefore, it is only by assessing accessibility, utilization and stability in addition to food availability that food security can be evaluated. International organizations recognize the difficulty in assessing food security and attempt to present food security through a suite of indicators of food security status and levels (FAO, IFAD and WFP 2012). These indicators provide in‐depth measures of food security when data, time and skilled analysts are available. However, for a developing country the task of estimating its food needs and food security level from the effects of an imminent/ongoing climatic disaster such as a severe drought, using a detailed analysis of all four dimensions of food security is simply not possible because of technological and resource considerations<sup>11</sup> . At the same time solid progress has been achieved in the development of early warning systems (EWS) by international agencies to assess food security at the national and regional levels arising from climatic‐induced food production shocks. A number of EWS operated by various international organizations that cover large regions of the world, including the SSA and SA, are the USAID’s Famine Early Warning Systems Network, FEWS NET<sup>12</sup> , the FAO’s Global Information and Early Warning System, GIEWS, the WFP’s Emergency Food Security Assessment, EFSA, and Vulnerability Assessment and Mapping, VAM, and the JRC’s MARS. Besides these international efforts, there are regional EWS as for instance CLISS, SADC and IGAD in Africa (FAO 2006).

In general EWS of food security are scenario driven assessments of an ongoing event, as for instance an ongoing drought,<sup>13</sup> and the analysis is driven by shocks, be these production or price shocks, as for example the expected yield shortfall from an ongoing drought condition and the anticipated rise in food prices. Therefore, EWS attempt to portray the food security as a snapshot in time. However, if a country wants to understand its food security profile, or in other words the frequency and 9 The Nairobi Joint Declaration can be downloaded at <u>http://www.statehousekenya.go.ke/speeches/kibaki/sept2011/NBI_DECLARATION_2011090902.pdf.</u> 10 The Nairobi Joint Declaration was made by Heads of State of countries who are members of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). Present members of IGAD are Djibouti, Eritrea (temporarily suspended), Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya and Uganda.

11 In addition, there is the issue of how worthwhile given other more pressing needs when there is an actual food emergency? 12 FEWS NET data can be accessed at http://fews.net/, WFP’s EFSA and VAM at <u>http://www.wfp.org/content/emergency‐food‐security‐assessment‐handbook, http://www.wfp.org/food‐ security,</u> FAO’s GIEWS at http://www.fao.org/Giews/english/index.htm, and JRC’s MARS at <u>http://mars.jrc.ec.europa.eu/.</u> 13 However, even this analysis need not be a deterministic analysis as the expected shortfall itself can be described probabilistically to give probabilistic assessments of impending food security.

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