Promoting the use of CSOs' evidence for food security: an action research project in southern Africa

Throughout 2003/2004 ODI led a major research consultation - the Forum on Food Security - on the challenges of persistent food insecurity in southern Africa. The Forum recognised the importance of factors such as climatic risk, technological limitations, HIV/AIDS, weak economic growth etc, but put particular emphasis upon policy and institutional failures within individual countries and at the regional (SADC) level - and upon the need to have such failures addressed by informed public debate.

The CSPP project - termed Look, Listen and Learn - was a response to this concern over the relative absence of food security debate and policy engagement. ODI's partners - the Southern African Regional Poverty Network (SARPN) and the SADC Food and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) were already engaged in research and information dissemination.

The aim of the one year pilot project (April 2005- March 2006), therefore, was to find common ground among CSOs in the region on food security policies and to raise the level of their contribution to regional policy development.

Apart from an important inaugural workshop, the main initial ways of promoting this objective were a series of national consultations, and a survey of regional policy institutions and policy processes.

On the basis of this work a number of Policy Briefs were prepared to assist CSOs in developing programmes of evidence gathering linked to current regional food security issues.

The main output of the pilot project was the regional conference (pdf 211kb) in late 2005. There was a measure of agreement on the types of policy issues that CSOs collectively should offer evidence and plan policy advocacy. These included the work of the Regional Vulnerability Assessment Committee and the National VACs, the implementation of the SADC Regional Integrated Strategic Development Plan, and the monitoring of SADC country commitments such as the Dar es-Salaam Declaration on Food Security and its public spending targets.

At the same time, several current constraints to effective engagement were discussed and actions proposed to address these:

• national level capacity and consultation mechanisms were still inadequate for effective regional policy engagement (an issue being addressed in part by FANRPAN and its country nodes)
  
• food security as a subject involves too wide a spectrum of CSO interests (trade, gender, environment, agriculture, social protection, land etc) and some focusing on 'entry points' among CSOs is required for effective commissioned contributions to policy (probably a weakness in the project design of Look, Listen and Learn)
  
• the institutions, rules and decision-making processes of regional food security policies remain poorly understood and difficult to access for CSOs, limiting their potential to contribute (SARPAN to work further on this)
  
• CSO evidence is currently poorly recorded and assimilated into regional findings, except in the case of a small number of research institutes already well integrated into the policy process through studies (again, a FANRPAN priority concern)

More or less in parallel to the Look, Listen, and Learn project (and building on the Forum for Food Security), ODI was assisting DFID in the design of a Regional Hunger and Vulnerability Programme for Southern Africa. This is now in operation (with both AusAid and DFID support) and consists of three components - 'evidence building, capacity building and policy influencing' (see www.wahenga.net). Both SARPN and FARNRPAN have also been successful in securing funding to continue work on research, information and policy advocacy in the field of regional food security policy.

The design of the project, and the initial consultations, were managed for ODI by Elizabeth Cromwell. When Elizabeth left ODI for Warwick University in September 2005, John Howell (who is based in Pretoria) took on ODI's role in the project, particularly with respect to the production of Policy Briefs.

• View Project Brief (pdf 90kb)
• Policy Briefs:
  • No.1 – The Role of SADC
    
  • No.2 – The Role of External Donors
    
  • No.3 – Harmonisation of Seed Policies
    
  • No.4 – The Dar es Salaam Declaration
    
  • No.6 – Reforming maize markets and regional food security
• Food Security Projects by ODI's Rural Policy and Governance Group

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