Introduction: In Africa’s rapidly growing cities, the dependency on marketed food is high and highly affected by widespread poverty that cause food and nutrition insecurity. However, the extent to which household food diversity is affected by equitably availability and affordability of foods is not well understood.

Objective: To assess women’s perception of availability and affordability of family foods in Addis Ababa and their social stratifications.

Methods: The EAT Addis study, a repeated cross-sectional data covering 233 clusters and 5467 households was used for analysis. Socio-economic characteristics of households and perceptions of availability and affordability of foods was collected by an instrument developed by the study. The foods were categorized into 11 “family food” groups based on FAO household and women’s diet diversity indices. Standard descriptive statistics were calculated for outcome and main explanatory variables including percentage, means and standard deviation.

Results: Availability of family foods were generally perceived high (>90%) for all family food groups except for fish, and showed much limited social stratification. In contrast, food affordability varied and the least affordable food groups were fruits, meat, eggs and fish.  In addition, there was considerable variation in perceptions of affordability by social stratification where affordability was better among the highest wealth strata compared to lowest (Fruits: 68.5% versus 25.5%, Eggs: 73.3% versus 30.0%, and meat 56.5% versus 16.5%). Similarly, affordability was better in highest educational strata compared to the lowest (Eggs 71.7% versus 26.6%, fruits: 69.2% versus 24.3%, and meat: 55.6% versus 14.2%).

Discussion: Although availability of foods required for a diverse diet is perceived as high in all social strata, affordability showed a marked social stratification. Improving dietary diversity in African urban areas need to prioritize the most vulnerable social groups.