This activity seeks to improve food security and mitigate the effects of food shortages in a region that regularly experiences crop failures. This is accomplished, in part, by identifying those people that face recurrent crises and then targeting rural development and emergency response programs to reduce their vulnerability.

Historically, there have been a number of different monitoring systems used in the region. The USAID/WARP-funded activity helps the region to harmonize systems and facilitate the exchange of information amongst them.

To date, the most important results of the project have been:

• An harmonized methodology for defining structural or recurrent vulnerability;
• An harmonized methodology for current vulnerability monitoring;
• A rapid Food Security Assessment methodology;
• The Sahel Food Aid Assessment/Monitoring System (SAFAM) software.

The Sahel region comprises the nine countries of Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Chad, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Senegal. With a few notable exceptions, most household and government revenue in the Sahel is reliant on rain-fed agriculture. Agriculture and livestock constitute about 40 per cent of the Sahel’s GDP. Furthermore, about 80 per cent of Sahelian cereal needs are met by local production under very difficult growing conditions including poor soils, encroaching deserts, and irregular rainfall. Sahelian people have developed complex livelihood systems in order to cope with these conditions but these systems are vulnerable to collapse if exposed to shocks such as long and severe drought. While there is abundant information on Sahelian risk factors, our understanding of people’s coping capacities and mechanisms is incomplete. More reliable and efficient systems for anticipating, preventing, and managing recurrent shocks will improve the responses that can be made to vulnerable populations and will contribute to improved food security in the Sahel.

On-going technical tasks include the design and development of:

Methodologies for assessing structural vulnerability and current vulnerability, including malnutrition measurements; Sampling methodologies; Data entry procedures and verification systems; Statistical and geo-statistical methods to understand the causes and dynamics of food insecure populations and to improve vulnerable population targeting. Follow-on tasks include:

Transferring methodologies to national counterparts; Transferring and implementing the system for monitoring current vulnerability in three countries; Preparing training courses and train counterparts in rapid assessment; Conducting primary data collection to establish baseline data on structural vulnerability in two countries; Finalizing the SAFAM software; Implementing SAFAM in four countries. Key collaborators are the Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS) and the U.N. agencies, WFP and FAO. Other bilateral donors include France, Italy, and the European Union. USAID’s own FEWSNET and Food for Peace are also involved as is CARE, an international NGO.