Drought Monitoring Techniques for Famine Early Warning Systems in Africa - Monitoring and Predicting Agricultural Drought: A Global Study - page 253

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that mitigating action can be taken. Complicating the task is the fact that,
over the years, the identities and numbers of those who are food insecure
can shift in time and space. Relevant physical, social, and political forces
are ever changing. In the face of this situation, the U.S. Agency for Inter-
national Development (USAID) created the Famine Early Warning System
(FEWS) to obtain the information needed to prevent widespread human
suffering due to lack of food availability and access. The FEWS (1999)
mission is stated as: “To provide host country and U.S. decision-makers
with timely and accurate information on potential famine areas.” In 2000,
USAID entered a new phase of support to monitor food security in Africa
with the launch of the FEWS Network (FEWS NET). FEWS NET is a
USAID-funded activity that “collaborates with international, national, and
regional partners to provide timely and rigorous early warning and vul-
nerability information on emerging or evolving food security issues. The
goal of FEWS NET is to strengthen the abilities of African countries and
regional organizations to manage risk of food insecurity through the provi-
sion of timely and analytical early warning and vulnerability information”
(FEWS, 1999). This chapter focuses on current FEWS NET methods for
monitoring drought and famine conditions in sub-Saharan Africa, in par-
ticular for the following FEWS NET countries (by region): Burkina Faso,
Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger; Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia,
southern Sudan, Uganda, and Tanzania; and Malawi, Mozambique, Zam-
bia, and Zimbabwe.

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M onitoring Drought and Famine by FEWS NET
Food security assessment in sub-Saharan Africa requires monitoring the
agrophysical and socioeconomic conditions of large and spatially dispersed
populations. From a physical science standpoint, food security assessment
requires monitoring climatic variables and modeling their implications for
rain-fed agriculture on an ongoing basis. Simultaneously, the human fac-
tors of famine vulnerability must be accounted for and mapped. These in-
clude, for example, population distribution, household income, prices of
grain and cattle (McCorkle, 1987; Kinsey et al., 1998), school attendance,
employment opportunities, nutritional status (Shoham, 1987; Kelly, 1993),
and other variables (Reddy, 1992). Food economy analysis is used by
FEWS NET to structure an understanding of livelihoods and their vulnera-
bilities. Joint spatial analysis of agrophysical and socioeconomic factors is
used to produce an integrated picture of the food security situation, for it is
the coincidence of vulnerable livelihoods and hazards that defines the level
of risk. Fieldwork, interviews with local experts, consultation with national
early warning committees, and professional experience build on spatial
analyses to yield a synthesis of the situation presented in monthly bulletins
and special reports (FEWS, 1999). Consumers of this information include
the decision-makers in host country governments, USAID, donor countries,
multinational organizations, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)