National Organizations and Famine Early Warning The Case of Mali1

In the Sahelian countries of West Africa, the problems of drought and famine are sufficiently long term to justify the existence of permanent food security agencies. Yet donors are reluctant to fund these agencies when there is not a crisis, forcing poor countries to use their own resources for food security and famine early warning efforts. To make more effective use of limited resources and since the data needs for effective famine early warning are similar to those for basic rural development, information systems to provide data simultaneously for development projects and famine early warning should be developed and supported. In Mali, one of the larger and poorer countries of the West African Sahel, basic information systems which gather a range of appropriate data already exist, but there need to be improvements in the quality of design and the timeliness of analysis to make the information more useful for either development or famine early warning.