Hunger is the major daily concern of most West Africans. In this region, about 40 million adults and as many as one-third of children aged under five are undernourished. But huge strides have been made in the past two decades in increasing food security and,in spite of rapid population growth, the number of hungry and malnourished adults

has decreased by 18 million over the past two decades.USAID/WARP’s program to increase regional capacity to achieve food security, improved natural resources management, and greater agricultural growth provides a comprehensive response to the complex issues surrounding hunger and poverty.

The program seeks to achieve this goal through three key results:

• Improved regional food security monitoring and disaster mitigation systems;
• Improved environmental monitoring and impact reporting systems;
• Improved sustainable agriculture to reduce hunger and poverty.

The current program builds on two decades of investment by USAID in the Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS). CILSS is now the internationally recognized center of expertise for Sahelian food security and environmental management issues. However, monitoring is a necessary but not sufficient weapon in the struggle to end hunger. With 30 per cent of regional GDP derived from agriculture and 54 per cent of the labor force engaged in agricultural activities, this sector must become more productive if we are to strike at the heart of hunger and food insecurity. WARP therefore recently shifted its focus and allocated a larger proportion of funds to improving the productive capacity of the region’s agricultural sector. This shift complements WARP’s participation in the new Presidential Initiative to End Hunger in Africa (IEHA).

The principal activities of this program include:

This activity supports the region’s famine prevention and warning system. Implemented primarily by CILSS, the regional experts in food production monitoring, the program collaborates with other global leaders in food monitoring such as the World Food Program (WFP) and USAID’s Famine Early Warning System (FEWS) and with national governments. The system continuously tracks rainfall, vegetation growth, and food production in order to estimate crop production and identify potential shortfalls and vulnerable populations. Both national government and the international community can then develop targeted responses to prevent food crises. For more information, click here.

This activity monitors changing land use in West Africa, and the impact of land degradation, desertification, and human use on the environment. In documenting the changing landscape using satellite images and local knowledge, the program provides decision-makers with information to better manage the natural resource heritage which forms the basis of the livelihoods of the majority of the region’s people. For more information, click here.

In response to the Presidential Initiative to End Hunger in Africa (IEHA), WARP developed an ambitious program that contributes to the goal of halving the incidence of hunger by 2015. WARP will support agricultural activities that transfer and disseminate productivity-enhancing technologies and information across the region’s borders. The dissemination of research findings on maize, rice, sorghum, and millet, some of the region’s major food crops, has been selected as the starting point. The program is poised to launch an information and education campaign to educate decision-makers on the potential of biotechnology. In the dryer northern countries, WARP is working with the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) to disseminate promising irrigation technologies as well as new drought-resistant crops that have the potential to increase farmer incomes. For more information, click here.