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Food is the most basic needs for survival, growth, and good health of human beings. Freedom from hunger is the most fundamental human right that can be attained if an individual is food secure (NGONGI, 2013). However, annoyingly significant proportion of the world’s population still lives under the situation of varying level of food insecurity. For instance, FAO’s (2015) report shows that the world hosts about 795 million undernourished people. Nearly, a third of this undernourished people are found in the Sub-Saharan part of Africa, a region to which Ethiopia is a part. Various reports show that Ethiopia too hosts a handful proportion of food insecure people. For instance, WFP and CSA (2014) report the persistence of poverty and food insecurity despite the long way the country has come in reducing them. MOFED (2014) reported the national level food poverty prevalence of 33.6% and estimated it to be 31.8% for year 2012/13. Boricha woreda is one of the 19 woredas in Sidama Zone and is known for repeatedly occurring food insecurity shocks. Since recent years, the woreda has been experiencing major crop failures due to irregular rains that show variation both in terms of size and periodicity. Response mechanisms to food insecurity shocks varies based on the objectives of the agents responding to it as well as the level at which they are targeted.    As active actors/agents/ of their own, households employ various coping strategies (response mechanisms) in the event of shocks that challenge their food security. Literatures such as Maxwell and Caldwell (2008), USAID (2011), Messer, (1989), Moris, (1989), and Degnew, (1994) in Degefa (2001) identify the host of coping mechanisms utilized by households as a response to food insecurity. However, such strategies may not be uniformly used by all households and in the same order in different contexts. They also may not be equally sustainable and in some cases may even end up in eroding household’s capacity to withstand future food insecurity shocks. Though, such effects of households’ coping mechanisms on their resilience to cope with future shocks have been widely discussed, mainly at conceptual level, empirical statistical evidences on the nexus are quite limited. For instance, though Carter et al. (2006) provide elegant theoretical explanation on the linkage between shock initiated coping mechanisms and household’s resilience, unavailability of data on coping strategies constrains them from including this variable in their estimation model. The study of Tran (2013) fails to make distinction between positive and negative coping at empirical level and also focuses only on the immediate positive effects of them on recovery from shocks. However, a particular coping strategy, though it is resilience erosive, can contribute for smoothing current consumption and /or recovery from shocks while still undermining one’s capacity to cope in the future. Moreover, capturing resilience only through recovery speed proxy is also too simplistic as resilience is multi-faceted concept. There is an increasing understanding of resilience as an ex ante capacity of households to withstand the effect of shocks (Alinovi et al. 2010; Alinovi et al. 2008; FAO, 2014; Ciani and Romano, 2013; Mulat and Negussie 2013; Guyu and Muluneh 2015). This way of conceptualizing rests resilience on the resources and options available to household to make a living and its ability to handle risks and hence enables to better capture the essence of resilience as absorptive (buffering), adaptive, as well as transformative capacity in addition to recognizing futuristic nature of it. Considering scarcity of empirical evidences on the issue and these flanks of the existing ones, the current study endeavors to play its part of contributing to literatures by using own conducted survey of rural households of Boricha woreda. It addresses the following interrelated research questions: 1) how do the study area’s households respond to food insecurity shocks? 2) Does the resilience level of households vary based on nature of previously employed coping mechanisms?

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Analysis of the Nexus between Coping Strategies and Resilience to Food Insecurity Shocks: The Case of Rural Households in Boricha Woreda, Sidama National Regional State, Ethiopia