Household food insecurity and its association with academic performance among primary school adolescents in Hargeisa City, Somaliland

Academic achievement is crucial for the social and economic development of young people and determines the quality of education of a nation. According to different studies, food insecurity adversely affects children's health, nutrition, and subsequent decline in academic performance by impairing students' ability to learn and therefore affects the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all. To provide evidence on the association of food insecurity with academic performance is necessary. The current study assessed household food insecurity and its association with academic performance among primary school adolescents in Hargeisa City, Somaliland. A school-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 630 primary school adolescents from December 2021 to March 2022. Students were selected using a multistage sampling technique. An interviewer-administered questionnaire was used to collect data on household food security and socio-demographic variables and entered into Epi data version 3.1. The data was exported to SPSS version 26 for descriptive and multivariable logistic regression analysis. Odds ratios and their 95% confidence intervals together with p