Moins de travail et plus de résultats - combinant l'analyse de la pauvreté et de la sécurité alimentaire
By Statistics Norway
In September, SSB and Norad agreed on a three-year project to improve food security statistics. Central partners will be The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and UN Committee of Experts on food security, agricultural and rural statistics (UN CEAG). The project seeks to contribute to improving food security statistics and analysis.
Both food security and poverty analyses can be based on data from Household Budget Surveys (HBS). It is a lot of work to prepare these data for poverty or food security analysis, and although the preparations have a lot in common, they are rarely done together. More commonly the work is done in “silos”, that is at different times and by different institutions and people. Furthermore, even if the National Statistics Offices (NSO) wanted to combine the work, there is no coherent recommendations on how to process data on poverty and consumption-based food security.
The “Food Security statistics project” aims at filling this need for coherent recommendations. The project will follow two parallel trajectories.
The first trajectory is to make a unified guideline for how to prepare data for food security statistics and poverty statistics. This will be done through a task force under the UN CEAG. The aim is to have the United Nations Statistics Commission (UNSC) discuss and endorse the guideline. Having the UNSC recommend the process will provide more clarity to the NSOs and others on how to implement it. This makes it crucial to involve the most knowledgeable and important actors on both food security and poverty analysis in developing the guidelines.
The second trajectory is regional and national capacity building aiming at producing data in accordance with the guidelines and using the statistics in analysis and regional cooperation. An important partner for the second trajectory is COMESA.
Why is the project important? When more and better statistics can be used for better policies and implementation of concrete programmes, it can contribute to improved food security in low- and middle-income countries. This is the overall goal of the project.