Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi

The food situation in Sub-Saharan Africa is an issue of growing concern. It is the contention of the paper that the primary issue is not overall supplies of food, but access to existing stocks of food and access to the means of production to produce food. Sen's concept of food entitlement is used as a means of analysing the food situation from the perspective of access to food. In the first section, the content of Sen's food entitlement approach is outlined. In the subsequent sections, various proposals for food security, both at the international and national levels, are outlined briefly and evaluated on the basis of the food entitlement approach. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the policy options designed to improve food entitlement systems.