Despite a decade of rapid and sustained economic growth along the path of recovery from the devastating 1994 genocide, the population of Rwanda remains highly vulnerable to food insecurity and malnutrition.Analysis of 2000/01 Household Living Conditions Survey data suggests that over 70 percent of the rural population is considered to be food poor, 45 percent of the children aged 6–59 months are stunted and 3.9 percent are wasted.        It is against this background that WFP proposed to undertake a national Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Analysis (CFSVA) with the objective of measuring the extent and depth of food insecurity and vulnerability and identifying the underlying causes.
 
Household livelihood strategies have a direct impact on food availability, food access and ultimately food security – and vice versa. Principal component analysis and cluster analysis were used to establish eight livelihood strategy profiles. Principal component and cluster analysis were also used to establish food consumption and food access profiles. Those profiles in turn were used to establish food security profiles for households. (For more information, including explanation of food scores and consumption calculations, see section. Household food security and vulnerability profiling).
 
Food insecurity was present among all livelihood groups but some groups were more prone to food insecurity: agriculturalists with no alternative source of income (33 percent, standard error 0.124) and agro-labourers whose work opportunities were related to farm employment (43 percent, standard error 0.127). The marginal livelihoods profile also had a high proportion of food insecure (34 percent, coefficient B = 0)). The food insecure among these three livelihood profiles represented over 83 percent of the total foodinsecure
population.