Assessment of Factors Influencing Food Security and Livelihood of Rural Women Headed Household in Sennar State -- Sudan

Abstract

This study seeks to assess the factors influencing food security and livelihood of rural women headed household in the Sennar state, Sudan the household survey was undertaken in four villages two for them from west sennar and other from east sennar. Sample size of four villages is equal and similar. Sample of 30 households was taken from each village by using stratified random sampling techniques. Thus, the total sample size was 120 rural households headed by women. The main data gathering tool for this study was interview questionnaires and observation, The study adopted the Household Food Insecurity Access scale (HFIAS) to determine the food security status of households in study area and the results show that, about 27.5% of the sampled households were food secure, and 40.8%, 22.5% and 9.2% suffer from moderate food insecurity medium and severe, respectively. The correlation results showed that there is a clear significant correlation between the level of food security and household size, education, employment status, access to land and livestock. No significant correlation between level of food security and age, marital status and deaths in childbirths. On the other hand, the correlation results showed that there is no significant correlation between the income diversification and age of household head, access to transports, electricity, and access to market. There is clear significant between income diversification and education of household head, marital status, household size, employment status, access to credit, access to household assets and access to land. The study recommends that encouraging girls to complete the basic stages of education and provision of adequate infrastructure which include electricity, water drinking and access to market to the rural communities to enable income diversification of rural households