This study focuses on the resilience of rural households to food insecurity. Resilience of households to food insecurity, in this study, refers to the ability of households to maintain certain levels of food security in shock-prone places. Food security analysis has been concentrated in and limited to estimation of vulnerability of households to food insecurity and to calculations of food deficits. This has led to aid dependent food security strategies and to the proliferation of development agencies providing humanitarian aid. Such humanitarian aid may protect households from mortality in the face of shocks and stresses but it may hinder sustained recovery of households from shocks. International humanitarian experiences and aid provisions to Ethiopia have shown the failure of the vulnerability literature and its food aid policy approach to empower the target population. A cross-sectional survey study was conducted in Ahferom Wereda, Central Zone of Tigray National Regional State. Primary data were gathered from rural households using a pre-tested semi-structured questionnaire. The resilience capacity analysis indicated that half of the numbers of the food insecure households were resilient. It also confirmed that gender differences influenced the resilience capacity of households. The inference that can be made is that food security studies that did not involve resilience capacity analyses don’t provide the true picture of livelihood condition of households.

Keywords: Resilience, Food Security, Shocks, Principal Component Analysis, Asset, Rural Livelihoods.