Implementing development programs amidst recurring conflict, unpredictable logistical challenges, and seasonal weather complications requires much more than just comprehensive strategic planning. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) Pillar 3 project found that success hinges on building meaningful partnerships with local actors and intentionally investing in their capacity strengthening.
FEWS NET forecasts food insecurity and informs decisions on humanitarian planning and responses in the world’s most food-insecure countries. The program has decades of experience providing leadership and critical early warning analyses on food security for the U.S. Government and other humanitarian agencies worldwide, examining how shocks—whether climatic, market-based, or conflict-related—impact households’ access to the essential resources necessary for survival. Our livelihoods-based approach to early warning and food security analysis is rooted in Household Economy Analysis (HEA), which is a framework that helps understand how households of different wealth levels manage their environment and assets and how they interact with the broader economy. HEA baselines are the starting point to FEWS NET’s contextual and forecasting analyses.
In November 2022, FEWS NET partnered with U.S. Government to develop and update HEA livelihood baselines for six countries, including Mali. This posed a particular challenge as the team had to conduct rigorous fieldwork in 16 livelihood zones across the 1.24 million km², including in areas impacted by conflict, during the peak rainy season. During this time, security threats in the Northern regions, such as Mopti, Gao, Kidal, and Timbuktu, coupled with geographical inaccessibility, posed extra challenges to the already arduous endeavor.
The key to overcoming these challenges and effectively updating Mali’s livelihood baselines was to integrate a localization approach. This meant recognizing local expertise and partnering with local stakeholders, while also investing in strengthening local capacity. Chemonics leveraged our decades of experience in the region to build strong, reciprocal relationships with local organizations. This foundation supported the project in effectively updating Mali’s livelihood baselines, delivering impactful short-term results and laying the groundwork for lasting sustainability in regional livelihood expertise.
Recognizing Local Expertise and Partnering with Local Stakeholders
We established a strategic partnership with Mali’s Early Warning System (SAP), a government agency that leads national food security analyses and response plans in collaboration with other government ministries and international organizations. The project developed a strategy that identified and capitalized on the HEA knowledge of SAP agents while investing in enhancing their technical skills. Through this partnership, SAP agents co-led the national data collection efforts, integrating their staff into the fieldwork teams to serve as team leaders and regularly participate in planning sessions. Integrating SAP’s nuanced contextual insights into the planning and implementation phases allowed the FEWS NET team to identify SAP’s strengths and expertise early on. This was key to navigating on-the-ground realities, including responding effectively to ethnic sensitivities and security risks.
In Mali, more than ten ethnic groups speak more than 14 languages. Given this culturally-rich and complex national landscape, centering the perspectives of local stakeholders and engaging them throughout project design, implementation, and evaluation ensured that fieldwork activities were responsive and appropriate to the local context. For example, SAP agents recruited and integrated data collectors from diverse Malian communities and ethnic groups, which streamlined communications and safety while promoting local ownership of the data collection process.
At the same time, the project regularly faced security and accessibility challenges when mobilizing teams for data collection in Mopti, Gao, Kidal, and Timbuktu, which are areas that have been affected by conflict. By effectively leveraging the partnership with SAP’s local agents, Chemonics was able to to tap into their contextual understanding of the study areas to safely and effectively complete data collection.
This post was adapted from a blog written by Stephen Brown, Angelina Soriano, Ayse Ergene, Giuliana Johnson, and Carlos Flores.
