.jpg)
by Shenggen Fan is director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute and Kanayo F. Nwanze is president of the International Fund for Agricultural
Thirty years on from a famine that claimed more than a million lives, Ethiopia is making great strides towards food security. And though progress across the continent is uneven, many other African nations are adopting policies that see agricultural development as a priority, to protect smallholder farmers and other rural households from the threats of volatile food prices, conflict and climate change.
'Resilience' is a term used in development discourse for the ability of poor communities to bounce back from shocks and stresses. Building resilience means helping these communities, as well as countries and global institutions, to prevent, anticipate and cope with such shocks. In the end, it means not just supporting recovery from crises but getting to the point where people are even better off than they were before the shocks occurred.
In our view, there are six critical aspects of agricultural policy reform that hold important lessons to guide investment in building resilient rural communities.
The first lesson is the need to invest in early warning systems, which help countries avoid overreliance on emergency relief when crises hit. When rains fail – as they did in 2011, leaving the Horn of Africa under threat of another famine – Ethiopia had an early warning system in place. The system not only tracked problems on the food supply side, such as rainfall and crop yields, but also monitored household nutrition levels. As a result, the country was better equipped to deliver food assistance to those who needed it most urgently.
The second policy choice is to invest in effective social safety nets. Since 2005, Ethiopia has managed the Productive Safety Net Programme, which gives poor rural people food assistance in return for their participation in projects that develop community infrastructure, like building health-care centres and restoring degraded watersheds. The safety net has operated in tandem with other food security initiatives offering assistance to community members who are unable to participate in public works, such as the elderly. Around half a million households registered with the programme between 2008 and 2012. Such schemes can help vulnerable communities become self-sufficient and build resilience against future food crises.
Third, it is vital for African countries to invest in agricultural research and development. In the 1960s and 1970s, Africa was a net exporter of food. Today, it is far more reliant on food aid. What changed? For one thing, many African governments slashed budgets for agricultural R&D. By contrast, other countries have upped theirs and seen significant agricultural growth and rural poverty reduction. For instance, Ghana, the only African nation that has yet achieved the first Millennium Development Goal of halving hunger, did so at least partly by doubling its agricultural R&D budget. To be effective, research on new crop and livestock varieties should go beyond just increasing yields. R&D should also help to build plant and animal tolerance against drought, heat and diseases, and to enhance nutrition.
A fourth key area for investment entails building robust markets that focus on both production and distribution. In Ethiopia, this has meant the establishment of the Ethiopia Commodity Exchange, which provides market information to over 250,000 people via SMS text messages. Similarly, Tanzania recruits 'market spies' to send current prices to remote farmers by SMS. Disseminating this information helps small farmers get fair market value for their produce. In other cases, building robust markets may mean literally building market infrastructure. In Madagascar, for example, some communities now have concrete-fortified markets that, when storms and flooding hit, can be back up and running within days.
A fifth essential element for greater resilience in Africa is cross-country collaboration. Once an innovation has been proven, it must be shared across the continent for maximum impact. For instance, when a group of farmers from Niger saw improved traditional planting pits in Burkina Faso, they were deeply impressed by the pits' capacity to combat water run-off and gully erosion. When they got home, some of the farmers decided to create their own planting pits. Yields increased and barren land was rehabilitated. The technique is now also being used in Cape Verde.
Finally, facilitating market links across the African continent will be critical to build resilience by boosting regional, continental and, ultimately, global trade. To this end, the African Union has renewed its commitment to build inter-country trade through the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa. The programme provides road and transport links for land-locked countries, thereby unlocking Africa's currently untapped markets.
These are just some of the lessons that have been learned. But lessons not only have to be learned; they must also be applied in order to drive the kind of inclusive growth that can end hunger and poverty across Africa. It is up to individual African countries to take note of the agricultural policies and investments that have yielded the best results. By helping them to do so and supporting them with the right investments, we can safeguard the continent from future food disasters.
As featured on AllAfrica
Shengen Fan, The Director General for the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), opened the meeting, providing an overview of how food Security and nutrition have featured prominently within the Global agenda last year. Notably, governments and development partners have finally recognized under-nutrition as a key issue to be tackled. Amongst various efforts, the G8 launched the new alliance for food security and nutrition, and the Scaling up Nutrition program was launched by forty five countries in collaboration with the United Nations. The Millennium Development goals have been broadened to incorporate climate change, urbanization, conflict and sustainable consumption and production patterns into the development framework.
The Director General stressed that action should be taken to prevent the future escalation of food prices by addressing factors that drove the crisis which include; weather shocks, volatile markets and animal related diseases. Despite the stabilization of global food prices - as basic staple foods such as maize, rice and wheat have exhibited minimal volatility - the international community must not remain complacent. ‘It is possible that Hunger and under-nutrition can be eliminated sustainably by 2025 however, governments and donors must devote sufficient resources, take policy action and invest in linking agriculture and nutrition to achieve this end,’ he said. Launching the report in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia was significant as the government has successfully pursued policies and wisely invested in agriculture, with the support of development partner to build food security in the country.
Panelist representing the UN Economic Commission for Africa, African Union and ILRI engaged in an intensive discussion on what has featured in consultations to define the development agenda for Africa. African Member states made a commitment to the African Agricultural Development Partnership CAADP, ten years ago, aiming to eliminate hunger and reduce poverty through agriculture, agreeing to invest a minimum of 10% of their budget into the sector and to raise agricultural productivity by at least 6%. Despite these developments, agriculture continues to face significant challenges in spite of home-grown policies to advance predominantly rain-fed smallholder agriculture. In this light, African Union Member states would like to identify drivers for success and lessons learned from countries such as China, India, Brazil and Thailand that have successfully eliminated Hunger.
Boaz Keizire, the AU technical advisor for CAADP highlighted that research on Africa’s agricultural growth trends demonstrates that countries with state driven policies that focused on building infrastructure and enhancing small holders’ access to markets have been remarkably successful. Adama Coulibaly, the Chief of Food Security at the UN Economic Commission for Africa noted that the next agenda for Africa is bound to be different, as exciting socioeconomic transformations are taking place within the continent - the seven fastest growing economies are from the continent. Such positive developments have repositioned Africa as a key player on the World stage, and leaders are seeking ‘new ways to lead to the top of the mountain’ and achieve sustainable development he stated.
Ongoing discussions at the African Union show that African countries are keen to develop their agricultural value chains, to engage in the global agricultural market. However, there are risks - of becoming more vulnerable to volatile global food prices and negatively impacting the livelihoods of small holder farmers if developed supply chains do not meet global demands. Finally Continental discussions have focused on the potential benefit of foreign direct investments in agriculture. However, Governments would like to explore policies and mechanism that can be developed to ensure that it does negatively impact food self-sufficiency.
Robson Mutandi took the opportunity to hold a side-meeting with the Director General of IFPRI and discuss the forthcoming ‘IFPRI 2020 Conference’ to be held in Addis Ababa from 15th -17th May 2014. This side-meeting also briefly covered other areas of possible cooperation at country level between IFAD and IFPRI. The President of IFAD, Kanayo Nwanze, will attend the IFPRI 2020 conference and will make a keynote presentation. IFAD has worked towards reducing the rural poor's vulnerability to climatic shocks by assisting them to diversify livelihoods, improve agricultural techniques and technologies and to strengthen community-based natural resource management preparing them for risks and to cope with disasters.
Download the report.
Connecting the Dots: Mapping Development in the Middle East and North Africa with Updated Arab Spatial
by David Cozac
www.arabspatial.org
Blog originally posted on IFPRI's blog
Improving food security and enhancing economic development in developing countries requires a multifaceted approach—and that includes access to reliable data. In the swiftly changing Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, up-to-date information is particularly crucial for policymakers to make accurate assessments of poverty, food and nutrition security, and other development indicators.In early 2013, the IFPRI-led open-access database and mapping tool—Arab Spatial—was launched to support this objective. The first initiative of its kind in the MENA region, Arab Spatial compiles, synthesizes, and geographically displays data on more than 200 indicators of food security and development. It analyzes food availability, accessibility, stability, and utilization, and the resulting nutritional status of individuals. It also considers the role that crises like violent conflict and shocks like climate change play in disrupting food security, and, in contrast, the role that policies and interventions can play in improving it.
The database allows users to customize outputs according to their needs. For example, if someone wants to determine a link between droughts and violent conflict, Arab Spatial can map only those indicators or selectively add more layers, depending on the question raised.
Now, one year later, an upgraded version is available. Announced on January 16 at a workshop on “Enhancing resilience to conflict in Arab countries through research and Arab Spatial 2.0,” the latest version includes the following new features:
- a gallery of downloadable pre-made graphs on Arab nations’ development and food security;
- customized analytical tools that allow users to compare and explore data by indicators, regions, and year, and to download the results;
- multilayer maps that dynamically track development projects geographically; and
- simpler navigation and greater interactivity for an enhanced user experience.
Related IFPRI materials
Pressroom page for "Enhancing Resilience to Conflict in Arab Countries" workshop
 |
| Children walk to school in Hoang Su Phi, Viet Nam, in 2002. Since then, the country has halved poverty overall. |
This past week, staff and partners from the IFAD country office in Hanoi joined colleagues at headquarters in Rome by video link. They convened to discuss a newly expanded approach to monitoring and evaluating the impact of IFAD-supported projects in Viet Nam. It was the third in a series of research seminars co-sponsored by IFAD and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), which has collaborated, as well, on developing this new approach.
The discussion was not without controversy. Still, there was a tangible sense of urgency, on all sides, about stepping up IFAD’s ability to accurately measure results on the ground – not only in Viet Nam but worldwide.
Ambitious target
Thomas Elhaut, IFAD’s Director of Statistics and Studies for Development, moderated the seminar. He began by placing the Viet Nam experience in a broader context: namely, the ambitious target set during the latest replenishment of funding from IFAD member states. The target calls for lifting 80 million rural people out of poverty by 2015.
Without improved evaluation, Elhaut suggested, IFAD will not have the evidence base to design and implement projects that can help reduce poverty on such as large scale. Nor, in the end, will it have the data to credibly report on progress toward the goal of 80 million.
From Hanoi, Atsuko Toda of IFAD and Nicholas Minot of IFPRI went on to describe the approach being tested in Viet Nam and why, in their view, it may hold promise for other countries. The methodology builds upon IFAD’s existing results and impact management system, or RIMS, which has been in use since 2003. By expanding the standardized RIMS household survey, this approach – dubbed “RIMS-plus” – aims to capture more detailed data that is relevant to specific project aims. In another innovation, it uses a control group of households, located outside the target area, to better assess which results are attributable to a project.
Additional indicators
Toda noted that the expanded questionnaire goes beyond the main objectives of the RIMS survey, which were to measure household assets and child nutrition. The RIMS-plus survey, she said, collects information on many additional indicators to diagnose constraints faced by farmers, including limits on access to rural markets, extension services and credit.
Minot added that the designers of the expanded questionnaire have still kept it relatively brief compared to most other household surveys; as a result, it should not overburden either enumerators or respondents.
Regarding the control groups, Minot explained that they would be selected from populations who live near project areas and whose backgrounds and economic status are similar to those of project beneficiaries. “It helps us to adjust for changes in the standard of living outside the project area,” he said. For example, a drought in the same province where a project is under way could cause an overall drop in rural incomes, which would have to be factored into any analysis of the project’s impact.
A third participant in the video link, Nguyen Ngoc Ahn of the Hanoi-based Development and Policies Research Centre, outlined the cost implications of both the extended questionnaire and the use of control groups. The questionnaire increases the amount of time needed to complete each survey and the training needed by enumerators, he said. The control groups add 300 households to the standard RIMS sample of 900 for large projects.
Costs of customization
At this point, some sceptical voices in the audience at IFAD headquarters questioned whether the new methodology’s value justified its added expense. Specifically, they asked whether the control groups could truly mirror the beneficiary households, given the complexities of rural poverty – including gender dynamics. In addition, they wondered whether the benefits of customized household surveys (more project-specific information) outweighed the advantages of standardized questionnaires (lower cost and consistent data across multiple projects).
In response, Toda noted that some of the expenses in Viet Nam represented the one-time cost of researching and developing a new evaluation tool. And while Minot acknowledged that the control groups could not match every household parameter, he maintained that they would provide valuable comparisons with project beneficiaries nonetheless.
On the question of standardized vs. customized surveys, Minot proposed a compromise: “We can use standardized modules but let each country decide which modules are most relevant for them,” he said. Such an arrangement would allow for a degree of customization without adding excessively to costs, he said.
As the seminar wrapped up, Thomas Elhaut praised the presenters in Hanoi for advancing IFAD’s thinking on the design and analysis of agricultural projects, even as various questions remain to be resolved. To some extent, those questions will be answered as the RIMS-plus experiment proceeds in the uplands and deltas of rural Viet Nam, where smallholder farmers need the tools to build a sustainable future.
Watch the recorded webcast of the IFAD-IFPRI seminar:
Beyond the Arab Awakening: Food security and conflict in the Middle East and North Africa
As popular discontent swept across much of the Arab world over the past year, some observers were puzzled. “How is it,” asked the World Bank’s World Development Report 2011, “that countries in the Middle East and North Africa could face explosions of popular grievances despite, in some cases, sustained high growth and improvement in social indicators?”
Last week, experts from IFAD and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) took a stab at answering that question in a panel discussion at IFAD headquarters in Rome. Their observations were based on early results from a three-year research project, co-funded by IFAD and IFPRI, examining the nexus of rural development, food security and conflict.
The study’s initial phase covers 24 “Arab-plus” nations, comprising all the members of the Arab League plus Iran and Turkey. The panellists emphasized that it is a work in progress and said the presentation was, in part, an opportunity to solicit feedback from colleagues who brought their own expertise to the table.
Those caveats aside, the researchers’ preliminary conclusions were provocative. While conditions vary from country to country, they said, indicators of well-being in the region are not as positive as official figures suggest. What’s more, Arab nations may be exceptionally vulnerable to conflicts associated with food insecurity and poverty.
A proxy for poverty
Given the severe rates of youth unemployment and rising commodity prices in many Arab states, there’s little doubt that economic grievances triggered at least some of the unrest they’ve experienced. Yet the official statistics issued by governments show a steady decline in poverty amidst economic growth.
At the panel discussion, IFPRI research analyst Perrihan Al-Riffai presented evidence that the government data may be flawed and incomplete. To set an accurate baseline for analysis, she explained, the IFPRI researchers have selected a proxy for official poverty figures. Rather than income, they’re looking at the rate of stunting among children under five – because stunting is a clear marker for vulnerability and food insecurity at the household level.
“The nutritional indicator is more comprehensive than the poverty indicator,” said Al-Riffai. “It really paints a different picture. When we plot the nutrition-growth relationship, we find that the Arab-plus countries are not doing as well as the rest of the world in reducing poverty through economic growth.”
This analysis matters, Al-Riffai and other panellists argued, because reliable data provide the only sound basis for evidence-based budget and policy decisions that will reduce poverty and promote stability.
Risk of food insecurity
The figures on child stunting also shed new light on food insecurity in the Arab world. Based on the proportion of revenues that each country spends to import food, the researchers found that the risk of food insecurity ranges from “low” to “serious” across the region. When the child-nutrition data are factored in, however, the risk shifts toward “alarming.”
Three countries in the Horn of Africa – Sudan, Somalia and Yemen – are among those registering the highest risk. And the rural poor are the most vulnerable population overall.
As IFPRI senior researcher Clemens Breisinger pointed out, investments in agriculture usually reduce poverty more cost-effectively than any other form of development. Yet smallholder farming has not thrived in the Arab-plus countries. In fact, farming is no longer the main source of income for the region’s poorest rural households, who now earn more than 80 per cent of their income from non-agricultural activities.
“Agriculture is globally the most pro-poor sector, but not in the Arab world,” said IFPRI senior researcher Clemens Breisinger. “There are some serious issues of growth not reaching the poor.”
Links to conflict
Another panellist, IFPRI senior researcher Jean-François Maystadt, went on to highlight some of the links between lagging agricultural development and conflict.
In general, said Maystadt, periods of political transition heighten the risk of violence between groups within a society, and recent events around the Middle East and North Africa surely seem to verify that point. More broadly, he said, the Arab world faces an ongoing risk of conflict stemming from myriad factors. These include weak institutions and a demographic ”youth bubble,” as well as dependency on oil exports for foreign exchange.
In some places – such as Somalia, the subject of a case study by the research team – climate change also fosters conflict by depriving rural populations of their traditional livelihoods.
But in many Arab countries, the disconnect between overall economic growth and persistent rural poverty may be the most inflammatory factor of all. “Rising food prices increase food insecurity,” said Maystadt, “and this increases the risk of conflict.”
Basis for investments
These finding suggest that a broad-based approach to food security, focused not only on agricultural development but also on stimulating the wider rural economy, could mitigate the risk of future conflicts in Arab nations. More study is needed to determine which policies will have the greatest impact.
To that end, the IFAD-IFPRI project team will supplement its initial research with visits to IFAD programmes and interviews in the field. In addition, the team will use its newly developed Atlas for Rural Development and Conflict, a comprehensive digital database, for further analysis and modelling. Their on-going work will concentrate mainly on Egypt, Gaza and the West Bank, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen.
Ultimately, the goal of the research project is more practical than academic. “It will give us a more quantified and empirical basis for our investments,” said IFAD Country Programme Manager Omer Zafar. Over time, informed by solid research, those investments should make a real difference in rural lives across the Arab world.
- Missed the presentation? Watch the recording
- Video interview with Perrihan Al-Riffai, IFPRI research analyst
- Video interview with Jean-François Maystadt, IFPRI senior researcher
- Powerpoint presentation
In December 2008, IFAD's Executive Board approved a strategic partnership grant between IFAD and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) to develop innovative policies on climate change mitigation and market access. This partnership will allow both IFAD and IFPRI to mutually benefit from each other's expertise in the fields of climate change and access to markets.
On 24-25 March IFPRI and IFAD colleagues met at IFAD headquarters to officially launch the programme. During the two day workshops we fine-tuned the workplan and budget for the first year.
As soon as the grant was approved, IFAD launched a competitive bidding process requesting IFAD country programme managers (CPMs) to submit proposals for countries that could benefit from this strategic partnership. The following four countries were selected since their project portfolio dealt either with climate change mitigation issues and/or market access issues:
- Ghana
- Morocco
- Mozambique
- Viet Nam
These countries are considered as a laboratory for replicating and upscaling innovative approaches in the above mentioned areas. The programme will also have wider regional impact through close involvement of the regional divisions in all programme activities in the areas of knowledge management and capacity building.
During the workshop participants :
- agreed to monitor progress using agreed upon benchmarks
- discussed the importance of communication within the two institutions and also on how to systematically share the results and impact of this strategic partnership with other stakeholders. In the coming months the two teams will jointly develop a communication plan. The team will use communication channels such as this social reporting blog, along with face-to-face meetings, dedicate websites and videos to continuously and systemtically communicate about the programme
- planned for the national consultation in each of the above mentioned countries
You may download the background documentations and the presentations delivered during the workshop at: http://www.slideshare.net/event/ifadifpri-start-up-workshop
