


































Food Science and Nutrition Studies 

ISSN 2573-1661 (Print) ISSN 2573-167X (Online) 

Vol. 4, No. 2, 2020 

www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/fsns 

21 
 

Case Study 

Hunger in Madagascar: A Case Study 

Lincoln J. Fry1* 

1 Athens Institute for Education and Research (ATINER), 974 SW. General Patton terrace, Port St Lucie, 

Florida, 34953, United States  

 

Received: April 21, 2020        Accepted: April 29, 2020        Online Published: May 21, 2020 

doi:10.22158/fsns.v4n2p21         URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/fsns.v4n2p21 

 

Abstract 

This paper is a continuation of a larger study which assesses hunger in African countries. The purpose 

of these papers in this is to look at the scope of hunger in countries and then to identify the factors that 

predict hunger in each individual country. This is the 5th paper in the series and is concerned with 

hunger in Madagascar, one of Africa’s and the world’s hungriest countries. The paper is important for 

several reasons. One is the fact that it, like all the country level papers, is based on a national 

probability sample, something the literature stresses is lacking and needed to improve hunger research. 

A second is that all the papers in the series, including this one, found that the literature’s suggestion 

that gender and the rural-urban dimension are significant predictors of hunger. These studies have 

provided a consistent list of significant hunger predictors. Employment in the country’s agricultural 

sector, wealth as measured by asset ownership, education and age were consistent significant 

predictors, .The surprising findings were related to respondent perception of the role of government in 

addressing hunger, questions like the way the government was handling whether people had enough to 

eat or addressing the living standards of the poor. The major policy implication of this and earlier 

papers is that governments need to reach out to citizens, presenting them with their food related plans 

and assuring them that the government is doing everything within its power to address hunger in their 

countries. 

Keywords 

hunger, Madagascar, hunger predictors, respondent perceptions of government actions, national 

probability sample 

 

1. Introduction  

This paper is a continuation of a larger project where the purpose is to demonstrate that existing 

survey research provides a means to assess the scope of hunger in African countries. Because this 

study reports on a project that generated national probability samples and utilizes a self-report 



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measure to assess hunger, the results may be seen to reflect a country’s total hunger level. That is 

because persons found in each country’s sample might have been respondents that could have 

been enumerated in formal hunger statistics as well as unreported persons that reflect what is 

known as hidden hunger. 

 

2. Hunger 

Among the various meanings of hunger, one refers to the want or scarcity of food in a country, and 

it is in that sense that this note addresses hunger. There are formal measures which include those 

who demonstrate clear cut hunger. In the latest UN Food and Agriculture Organization Report 

(2019), the estimate was that 925 million people were hungry worldwide, and that 239 million 

people in sub-Saharan Africa were hungry or undernourished. This made Africa the continent with 

the second largest number of hungry people, following Asia and the Pacific with 578 million. Due 

to the difference in population sizes, Sub-Saharan Africa had the largest proportion of 

hungry-undernourished people, estimated at 30 percent of the population compared to 16 percent 

in Asia and the Pacific. What is known as hidden hunger is a major issue and there are an estimated 

two billion persons that are affected by a chronic deficiency of essential vitamins and minerals. 

Among this population the signs of malnutrition and hunger are less visible, but it has negative and 

long-term consequences for long-term health, productivity and cognitive development (Mµthayya 

et al., 2013). 

2.1 Hunger in Sub-Saharan Africa 

As Clover (2004) has suggested, while the right to food is one of the most consistently acclaimed 

assertions in international human rights law, yet no other human right has been so frequently and 

spectacularly violated. Her discussion of food insecurity in Sub-Saharan Africa leads to the 

conclusion that hunger is a multi-faceted issue in Africa, and that just growing more food will not 

eradicate the problem. Agriculture is important and Clover points out that Africa has gone from 

being a key agricultural commodity exporter into being a net importer; the African continent now 

receives the most food aid. Perhaps the most important point Clover made was to suggest hunger 

will not be eradicated by just throwing money at the problem. 

2.2 Hunger in Madagascar 

Madagascar is one of the poorest and hungriest countries on the Planet. The World Food Program 

(2015) noted that 92 percent of the population lives on less than two US dollars per day, and 

Concern World Wide (2019) listed Madagascar as one of four countries that suffer from a level of 

hunger that is alarming; The country was ranked 114 out of 117 countries in terms of the degree of 

hunger in the country. Climate change is also a major focus of the literature devoted to hunger in 

Madagascar, especially as it affects small holder farmers (Harvey et al., 2014). Small farmers in 

Madagascar are portrayed as particularly vulnerable to extreme weather events, particularly 

cyclones, which cause significant crop loses. 



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2.3 Measuring Hunger 

As Godecke et al. (2018) have indicated, measuring hunger remains problematic. This does not 

mean that hunger has been ignored. For example, there has been an effort in the research 

community to develop hidden hunger measures, indices and maps. These indices and mapping 

efforts have been productive and are useful here because they highlight the role of several important 

factors that are addressed in this paper. One of these is fact that African farmers may be hungrier 

than the rest of the population, and that gender may also be a significant factor, with women 

hungrier than men.  

Both Godecke et al. and Muthayya et al. point to the lack of national probability samples as the 

primary hunger research roadblock in Africa. This study does use a national probability sample, 

with the objective being to identify policy related factors that possibly help alleviate hunger 

problems at the country level, Madagascar in this instance. 

 

3. Data 

The study’s data source is the Afrobarometer Project, Round 6. The project started 1999 with 12 

countries in Round 1 and by 2016 when the 6th Round survey was completed in there were 36 

countries included in the survey. The surveys utilize a standardized questionnaire, with new items 

added to the next administration of the instrument. Sampling sized are either 1,200 or 2,400 

depending on the country’s population. 

The procedures used in all the Afrobarometer surveys are explained in in Bratton, Mattes and 

Gymah-Boadi (2005). 

3.1 Measures 

The study’s questionnaire included what is called The Lived Poverty Index used in the Afrobarometer 

studies which was adopted from Mattes (2003). One of the five questions in the Index askes “over the 

past year, how often, if ever, have you or anyone in your family gone without enough food to eat”. 

Fixed responses to this question were: never, just once or twice, several times, many times, always. 

These responses were coded as follows: Never = 1, just once or twice = 2 and many times and always = 

3. These categories provide the basis for the ordered logistical analysis presented in the Results section. 

The study’s independent variables were basic socio-demographic variables included in the 

questionnaire and the significant factors that predicted hunger in the earlier papers. Each of these 

paper looked at hunger and the factors that predicted it at the country level. These countries were 

Burundi (Fry, 2017), Benin (Fry, 2018a), Zambia (Fry, 2018b) and Madagascar (Fry, 2020). 

 

4. Results 

This study’s sole analytic procedure was to conduct an ordered logistical regression analysis 

and the results of that procedure appear in Table 1. 

 



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Table 1. The Results of Madagascar’s Ordered Logistical Analysis 

Variable Coefficient Standard Z P 

Education -.38 .07 -5.33 .000 

Ag worker .81 .18 4.56 .000 

Total assets -.28 .07 -3.83 .000 

Enough to eat -.55 .18 -3.14 .000 

Age .28 .09 3.16 .000 

Extra funding prior .44 .16 2.86 .000 

Living stands-poor -.43 .19 2.30 .000 

Job status -1.09 -1.94 1.78 .08 

Urban-rural .25 .14 -1.77 .08 

Gender .08 .14 -.59 .55 

Occupation .04 .05 .67 .50 

Reduce gap-poor -07 .22 -.33 .74 

Number of observations    1,129 

Chi square    215.15 

Probability    .000 

Pseudo R2    .09 

 

Table 1 shows that nine independent variables reached statistical significance in Madagascar’s ordered 

logical regression analysis. This was to be expected in that most of the independent variables in the 

regression equation had been found to be significant predictors of hunger in the previous studies. Again, 

gender and the urban rural dimension were found not to be significant predictors. The ordered logical 

regression produced a pseudo R square of 09. 

 

5. Discussion 

As mentioned above, what is unusual about this Afrobarometer file is that it contains respondent 

surveys from some of the World’s and Africa’s hungriest countries, Madagascar is one of those nations, 

and the fifth country to be included in this series of papers; the others were Burundi, Benin, Tanzania, 

and Senegal. Perhaps what is most important about these earlier papers is that the two major factors 

identified in the literature as hunger predictors were not significant predictors in any of these countries, 

namely gender and the rural-urban dimension. A consistent set of predictive factors did emerge from 

this study. As expected, factors like poverty and employment in the agricultural sector were found to be 

consistent predictors of hunger, but the most striking findings were respondent’s perception of the 

government’s handling of food related problems, like assuring people have enough to eat, The major 

implication of this and earlier papers is that governments need to reach out to citizens, presenting their 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/fsns                Food Science and Nutrition Studies                     Vol. 4, No. 2, 2020 

25 
Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

food related plans and assuring them that the government is doing everything within its power to 

address hunger in their countries. 

 

References 

Bratton, M., Mattes, R., & Gyimah-Boadi, E. (2005). Public opinion, democracy, and market 

reform in Africa. Cambridge University Press. 

Clover, J. (2003). Food security in sub-Saharan Africa: African security review 12 Facts. 

Retrieved from http://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/the-worlds-10 

Fry, J. L. (2017). Is hunger destined to be perpetual in Burundi? Food Science and Nutrition Studies, 1, 

15.  

Fry, J. L. (2018). Hidden hunger in Benin: the scope and prospectus. J Food Sci Nutr., 1(1), 3-8. 

Fry, J. L. (n.d.). Continuities in the HIV/AIDS policy debate in South Africa. African Journal of 

Infectious Technology, 3(3). 

Global Hunger Index. (2018). Retrieved from http://www.globalhungerindex.org 

Godecke, T., Stein, A., & Qaim, M. (2018). The Global Burden of Chronic and Hidden hunger: 

Trends and Determinants. Global Food Security, 17. 

The World’s Ten Hungriest Countries. (2019). Retrieved from 

http://www.concernusa.org/story/worlds-ten-hungriest-countries  

Top 10 Hungriest African Countries. (2015). Retrieved from 

http://www.africaranking.com/top-10-hungriest-african-countries-of-2015 

UN Food and Agriculture Organization Report. (2015). The State of Food and Agriculture. 

Retrieved from http://www.fao.org/publications/SOFA 

 

 

 

http://www/
http://www.africaranking.com/top-10-hungriest-african-countries-of-2015
http://www.fao.org/publications/SOFA

