Background

The Le Comité Permanent Inter-Etats de Lutte contre la Sécheresse dans le Sahel (CILSS) was set up in 1973 to ensure food security in the Sahel region.

The EC-FAO Food Security Programme has been providing support to regional food security bodies, such as CILSS, which have received funding from the European Union’s Food Security Thematic Programme.

In particular, the EC-FAO Programme has helped build capacity in regional food security information systems by providing training and equipment. It is working with CILSS to harmonize processes and standards to make sure food security related information can be collected and shared more effectively.

Specific areas of collaboration

1. Gather lessons learned on agricultural best practices, livelihoods and coping strategies, etc. and widely disseminate them in the region.

2. Publish studies on the comparative advantage of national and regional market oriented food security strategies

3. Deliver food security e-learning courses. These will be based on current learning courses available at www.foodsec.org/dl

4. Develop indicators for measuring resilience and vulnerability to food insecurity.

5. Develop an updated framework for analyzing and classifying food security in the Sahel called the Cadre Harmonise Bonifié.

Elements of the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) will be included into CILSS’s Cadre Harmonise. Both the IPC and the Cadre Harmonise make sure that the way in which food security is measured, and resulting classifications, are comparable across countries.

6. Provide support to the technical secretariat of the regional Council on Food Security in West Africa (CORESA). This will include help in developing indicators and providing both technical and methodological support in analyzing food security related data.