This 12-page paper, an outcome of the seminar "Role of Information Tools in Food and Nutrition Security in ACP-Countries Annual CTA" held in Maputo, Mozambique, aims to identify opportunities and constraints facing the development of a collaborative internet-based tool being undertaken by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), several regional African policy research networks, and Department of Agricultural Economics at Michigan State University (MSU) called the Food Security and Food Policy Information Portal for Africa (FSIP). The paper reviews the history of building the portal and discusses the research and policy challenges FSIP is addressing and its potential payoffs. It describes the FSIP implementation plan and the implications for regional research networks, country-level organisations involved in these networks, and other national research and policy institutions.


From the Executive Summary:

"Getting the food and agriculture system moving faster is crucial for structural transformation and poverty reduction in Africa. This requires investing in basic productive and market infrastructure, and expanding appropriate research, knowledge, and technology for increased productivity and competitiveness of African food and agricultural systems and holds the key to increased food security and overall income. The advent of the World Wide Web and steady reductions in the cost and increases in the speed of Internet services in Africa are changing the way we must think about the development, storage, and dissemination of policy analysis and training materials, all crucial inputs for agricultural development..."

The FSIP programme aims to:

(1) improve the skills of African technical and social scientists to use more effectively the wealth of scientific knowledge and experience currently available on the internet to carry out applied policy research, outreach, and training;

(2) make the work of Africans more visible to others, thereby fostering south-north and south-south learning;

(3) strengthen learning communities to make food security and food policy research and outreach more effective.

The tool itself aims to give researchers and policy makers a one-stop and multi-language location for: (a) easily accessing key data and analyses on food security and food policy for every country in Africa; (b) sharing their own work with colleagues across the world; (c) finding training materials on more effective use of the information and communication technology (ICT), and on improved applied research and policy analysis methods; and (d) spotlighting experiences on how to improve the effectiveness of policy extension efforts.

The three broad areas of FSIP content include: country-level pages of information, documents and links; topic-level pages providing links to websites, data, and documents on 24 topics of interest to agricultural scientists and food policy analysts; and skill-building pages in English, French, and Portuguese, providing links to tutorials and other capacity building materials fo improving research, management, and technical skills.

The hoped-for results of the project would bring a "highly dynamic communication tool" for offering "cutting-edge information and communication technology to promote improvements in the quality of technical as well as food security and food policy research conducted by Africans and better integration of African research results into the policy design process world-wide." In addition, the hope is to reduce research costs and increase efficiency, stimulate synergy between regional and national research organisations, and provide higher education in Africa with more visible access to an electronic library in a multi-lingual web-based environment. According to the paper, the existing level of internet connectivity in many countries is a challenge. Also, training and promotion of the tool is needed, particularly in universities, along with funds for country-level outreach.