While Africa south of the Sahara has made substantial improvements to its food security in recent years, one in four people in the region remains undernourished. A new web portal launched that focuses on agriculture, food security, and nutrition in Africa south of the Sahara has been designed to strengthen capacity for timely food security information, policy research, and analysis to ensure the continued improvement of the region’s food and nutrition security.
The Food Security Portal for Africa south of the Sahara (FSP-SSA), created by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) with support from the European Commission, is a continuation of the EC-funded project on “World Food Crisis: Support for Food Security Monitoring and Analysis for Appropriate Policy Responses”, a three-year project initiated in 2010 in response to the lessons that emerged from the 2007-2008 world food crisis.
To address the shortage of easily accessible high-quality data, the EC-funded project developed the original global Food Security Portal to pool together timely, relevant, detailed, and high-quality country-level information in a systematic and structured way. The FSP-SSA represents the latest step in the project, focusing on regional needs.
“The portal will host a broad set of open data related to food and nutrition security and early warning mechanisms, as well as opportunities for dialogue among policymakers, researchers, the private sector, and other stakeholders,” said Maximo Torero, Director of the Markets, Trade and Institutions Division at the International Food Policy Research Institute.
ILRI Clippings 