Tripartite cooperation to strengthen
official food security statistics
Abstract
Food security is high on the political agenda. It is a complex issue with many factors
determining food security at the household level. Information is needed on availability,
access and utilisation of nutritious food. Data analysis is often undertaken ad hoc and by
agencies working in parallel to the National Statistical Systems (NSS). In the past years, the
World Food Programme (WFP) has increasingly made use of national household survey
data for food security analysis. The advantage is nationwide coverage and regular periodic
updates allowing progress to be measured towards zero hunger – at a much lower cost.
Data analysis is done in cooperation with the National Statistical Office and/or other NSS
partners. The long term goal is to contribute to developing sustainable national systems for
food security analysis.
The results so far can be seen at country level, with the publication of a variety of food
security and nutrition reports. Modules have been included or refined in national surveys to
enable better food security analysis.
WFP cooperates with Statistics Norway on this. This paper provides the rational for WFP to
pay more attention to and invest in official statistics and how official statistics can benefit.
Ellen Cathrine Kiøsterud, corresponding author
Food Security Statistics Analyst - VAM
ellen.kiosterud@wfp.org
World Food Programme, Regional Bureau for Asia
Wave Place Building
7th Floor, 55 Wireless Road, Lumpini Pathumwan,
Bangkok 10330, Thailand
Phone: +66 2 655 4115 # 2423
Mobile:+66 (0)81 859 7981
www.wfp.org/food-security
Dr. Astrid Mathiassen
Researcher
astrid.mathiassen@wfp.org, astrid.mathiassen@ssb.no
World Food Programme and Statistics Norway
Statistics Norway
Akersveien
0177 Oslo
ssb.no
1
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Contents
Abstract ............................................................................................................................. 1
More mileage from national statistics .................................................................................... 3
1.
Food security and nutrition statistics ........................................................................... 4
2.
The partners in the cooperation and their motivation .................................................. 5
2.1
The motivation for WFP to cooperate more with the NSS on the household
surveys ........................................................................................................................... 6
3.
4.
2
2.2
The motivation for Statistics Norway .................................................................... 7
2.3
NORCAP ............................................................................................................. 8
The approach to cooperation ...................................................................................... 9
3.1
Information .......................................................................................................... 9
3.2
Project ................................................................................................................. 9
3.3
Integration ......................................................................................................... 10
Results ..................................................................................................................... 11
4.1
Analysis and dissemination of food security statistics ........................................ 11
4.2
Building relations and dialogue .......................................................................... 11
4.3
Integration of food security statistics in regular statistics production .................. 11
4.4
Capacity building ............................................................................................... 12
More mileage from national statistics
The scale and the importance of food insecurity make it necessary that up-to-date, detailed,
and reliable information on food security around the world is available to guide policy
responses. Unfortunately this is not the case. Estimates of food insecure people are many
places based on imputations and assumptions, and many countries lack fundamental
quantitative data on the situation of the food insecure. There are however many initiatives to
improve the information on which food security policies and interventions are made. This
paper is about one of them: Cooperation between the World Food Programme, Statistics
Norway and the National Statistical System in a number of countries on analysis of national
household expenditure surveys (HES) for food security purposes.
“Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to
sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an
active and healthy life”.
Definition adopted at the 1996 World Food Summit
The World Food Programme is the world's largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger
worldwide. Statistics is a central part of WFP monitoring and planning of food security
interventions. Statistics from the national statistical systems in the countries where WFP is
active is used for this all the time: Population data, anthropometry, health, prices, agricultural
production, education, maps and much more. In most countries this comes out on a regular
basis as part of official statistics.
Food security data has to a lesser extent been part of official statistics. Data collection and
analysis is often undertaken ad hoc and by agencies working parallel to the National
Statistical Systems.
This is changing. The use of national data for food security analysis is growing. WFP is
increasingly making use of national household expenditure surveys for food security
analysis, with emphasis on access to food, food consumption, and diet diversity. The results
so far can be seen at country level, with the publication of a variety of food security and
nutrition reports based on national household expenditure surveys. Modules have also been
included or refined in national surveys to enable better food security analysis.
The most immediate benefit from this is that it enables WFP to obtain food security data with
national coverage, large samples, regular updates and the opportunity to analyze it together
with other social indicators (education, labour, housing, etc). This allows us to learn more
about food insecure households.
WFP—and all other users of food security statistics — can through this source get more cost
efficient access to valuable baseline information for programming and monitoring.
The long term goal is to contribute to developing sustainable national systems for
food security analysis.
3
1. Food security and nutrition statistics
Addressing food insecurity requires accurate information on how many and where the food
insecure people are, and the causes of food insecurity. Food security is commonly described
as comprising 3 main elements. Food Availability reflects the physical presence of food in a
given area, such as a country or a region. The food may be available through the overall
production in that area, or through commercial or non-commercial imports to that area. Food
Access reflects the ability of households to acquire food, either through own production,
purchases, barter or gifts. Food Utilization reflects both the preparation of food at the
household level and the bodily absorption of the nutrients at the individual level. Stability of
the three dimensions above is also important, as people cannot be considered food secure if
their access to food is not stable through time.
Access is the focus area when analysing household expenditure surveys. The information at
centre is the detailed questions on food consumption: What and how much the households
consume, measured in volume and value, as well as from where they source the food.
The surveys can typically be used to generate the following household food security
measurements:
Diet quantity

The amount of food people consume, in terms of calories. Measured as individual
daily calorie intake and food energy deficiency for the household.
Diet quality

The types and variety of food people consumed. Measured by diet diversity and
staples share of consumption.
Economic vulnerability

The households’ ability to acquire enough and nutritious food. Measured by food
expenditure share and poverty lines. These are usually an important reason for these
surveys to begin with and WFP is seldom involved in calculation of these.
WFP has developed guidelines on how to assess household expenditure surveys (HES) for
the purpose of food security analysis1. The analysis is mainly built on recommendations
from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)2.
The analysis also takes advantage of other information available from the HES. Typical
household expenditure surveys capture information spanning topics from education, gender,
health, and livelihoods. Some HES datasets will also include modules on shocks
experienced by the household and/or anthropometric information. Equipped with full access
to this data, the analyst can develop a meaningful narrative to contextualise the findings from
the key indicators and develop a comprehensive assessment.
1
WFP (2014 – forthcoming) VAM guidance paper: Conducting Food Security Assessments using
Household Expenditure Surveys (HES).
2
Smith, Lisa C. and Ali Subandoro (2007) Measuring Food Security using Household Expenditure
Surveys.
4
A second step is the inclusion of specific food security indicators into national household
surveys.
An important step forward has been the inclusion of the Food Consumption Score (FCS) in a
number of Living Standard Measurement Surveys and other household surveys. It has
provided baseline information, which is needed to understand more of the food security
situation in a country as well as measuring changes over time. It has provided the
opportunity to validate this indicator. Based on the FCS module, it is also possible to
calculate the Household Dietary Diversity Score. A third indicator frequently used by WFP is
the Coping Strategies Index (CSI), which has also been included in a number of surveys.
These are good indicators to map the food security situation across geographical areas,
household characteristics and livelihoods. Having the baseline data on this from national
surveys allows for planning and monitoring of programmes and policies, and provides
important preparedness information on how critical the situation is when a crisis hits an area.
The FCS and CSI are simple indicators to collect and used in rapid assessments of crisis
situations.
2. The partners in the cooperation and their motivation
Statistics
Norway
Norcap
World Food
Programme
NSO
What is referred to here as the tripartite cooperation is that WFP cooperates with the owners
of the National Household Expenditure Surveys, most often the National Statistical Office
(NSO), around analysis of their data. WFP receives technical assistance from Statistics
Norway through NORCAP in this work. There have been discussions of a direct capacity
building link between SN and the relevant NSOs, but this has not happened yet.
Within WFP, the food security analysis function is referred to as Vulnerability Analysis and
Mapping (VAM). Every WFP country office has a VAM unit ranging from a VAM focal point to
a whole VAM team including GIS and data analysis experts. The country office VAM officer
is responsible for the contact with the NSO in the country.
WFP comes to this cooperation with long experience in food security analysis and hands on
experience in using of food security statistics for situation analysis, project implementation
and policy planning. The VAM unit at WFP headquarters in Rome takes part in the high level
international discussions and research on food security analysis and what indicators to use
to measure food security and nutrition in the best possible way. VAM staff in the field have
experience in training enumerators on collecting food security data, as well as developing
questionnaires and analysing the results.
The National Statistical Offices are usually the owners of the relevant surveys and the
custodians of official statistics. They have expertise on conducting large surveys and
building long term systems for official data. For the NSOs who are involved in this
cooperation, there is mainly an interest in seeing the data used, sometimes based on an
5
expressed government interest in food security monitoring and there is an interest in
securing continued support to the national surveys through cooperation.
There is also an expressed interest for capacity building. The NSOs have staff who can do
analysis and questionnaire development. However, the nature of WFP’s work leads WFP to
countries that are usually low on human resource capacity in public structures, including the
NSS. Thus these qualified people are often overstretched so there is also a continuous need
for more people to be trained.
Statistics Norway (SN) has been involved since 2010. SN has long term experience in
international cooperation in statistics. In this context, there are two roles where SN
contributes. One is in providing technical expertise to WFP on statistical methodology to
back up the VAM officers in the field. Until 2013 the main support has gone to the WFP
headquarter in Rome and focussed on research and development of tools. The other role is
the knowledge about the National Statistical Systems (NSS). SN has supported household
surveys and other surveys in several countries. They also have long experience in capacity
building through institutional cooperation with NSOs in developing countries and countries in
transition. Since October 2013 capacity building has been given more attention to at the
WFP regional bureau for Asia, with a SN staff member being seconded to Bangkok.
The opportunity for SN staff to work for WFP is made possible by secondments through the
Norwegian expert roster NORCAP. While NORCAP is not involved in the technical details of
the cooperation, it plays an important role on the practical side to make this happen.
2.1
The motivation for WFP to cooperate more with the NSS on the household
surveys
The cooperation between WFP and the NSS on food security analysis is not a new idea.
What is new is that it is receiving more attention and is part of the WFP strategic framework.
Since 1990, there have been at least 760 nationally representative household expenditure
surveys undertaken in 129 developing countries3. In comparison, WFP has conducted
around 100 nationally representative food-security baseline studies in the past 10 years4.
These are referred to as Comprehensive Food Security and Vulnerability Analyses
(CFSVAs). The vast majority of WFP’s baseline studies involve large-scale primary data
collection exercises. Knowing how costly data collection is and seeing the opportunities to
cover significant parts of the baseline information need through the HES-surveys, it is clear
that WFP should make better use of existing data sources.
The VAM Asia strategy for 2013—2015 has an emphasis on cooperation with the NSS. One
thrust in the strategy is to establish a practice for periodic food security outcome monitoring.
It specifies the goals of getting more mileage out of national surveys, using existing data for
more analysis and including food security questions in future surveys. An output is
introducing a national series of annual food security reports based on national data.
Another thrust is to build national and regional partnerships and capacity. The strategy is to
3
De Weerdt, Beegle, Friedman and Gibson (2014) The Challenge of Measuring Hunger, World Bank
Policy Research Working Paper 6737
4
WFP (2014 – forthcoming) VAM guidance paper: Conducting Food Security Assessments using
Household Expenditure Surveys (HES).
6
engage national statistical agencies in food security analysis and build effective partnerships
with regional organisations. In February 2014 this resulted in a workshop in Bangkok with
participants from both NSS and WFP from ten countries in Asia.
Cooperation with NSS is also included in the WFP Strategic Results Framework 2014 –
2017. Among initiatives aimed at national capacities is strengthening national systems for
monitoring trends in food security and nutrition. The UN Food and Agricultural Organisation
(FAO) and WFP also have a Joint Strategy 5 that emphasises to “reorient investments
toward long-term sustainable Information Systems for Food and Nutrition Security (ISFNS)
led by national and regional institutions”. This is aligned with WFP corporate strategy on
ISFNS.
The main arguments for WFP to work with the NSS on HES analysis and capacity building
are:




Source of information - To WFP, the central point is that the HES is a massive source
of data that is and can be further used for food security and nutrition program
planning and monitoring.
Efficient use of resources – The NSS provides data from surveys reaching more
people, undertaken regularly and at lower cost than when WFP collect it themselves.
Harmonisation - It is better to have agreed transparent high quality national indicators
than a variety of competing surveys and reports
Commitment to national capacity building
There may still be instances when an HES is not a sufficient substitute for a WFP-led data
collection exercise. The timing of the survey, WFP’s assessment objectives and the
comprehensiveness of food consumption data may still warrant a primary data collection
exercise. Baseline information obtainable from HES surveys is also only one of several
areas of WFP data needs. WFP will still continue with other data collection exercises that are
not covered by official statistics in the countries where this is relevant.
2.2
The motivation for Statistics Norway
As a national statistics office, the motivation for Statistics Norway (SN) to engage with WFP
in this cooperation is relevant beyond the technical support they can provide.
SN has a division that works with international development cooperation. The core activity of
this division is institutional cooperation programmes with sister organisations in other
countries6. Other work involves giving technical advice on statistics to Norwegian partners in
international development work, and working with UN organisations, Paris21 and other
international partners. The work is financed mainly by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign
Affairs and not through the core funding to Statistics Norway.
5
FAO-WFP Joint strategy on Information Systems for Food and Nutrition Security
http://documents.wfp.org/stellent/groups/public/documents/eb/wfpdoc061470.pdf
6
More information on this work is found in Statistics Norway (2013) Institutional Development
Cooperation in Statistics Norway, Plans and Reports 9/2013 http://www.ssb.no/en/omssb/omoss/vaar-virksomhet/planer-og-meldinger/institutional-development-cooperation-in-statisticsnorway
7
In the SN institutional cooperation with an NSO, the purpose is capacity building. Although
there is always a statistical product to cooperate around, SN has no user interest in the
product itself. SN has experienced how it is to work with long term, systematic efforts to
strengthen the statistical systems together with other NSOs in developing countries and
countries in transition.
The context is that in addition to serving government needs, the NSS deals with many nongovernmental organisations who are providing support, funding and are the users of the
NSS products. The cooperation with WFP around the Household Income and Expenditure
Surveys provides an opportunity to explore solutions to challenges experienced in this
context.
Limited analysis and superficial involvement of NSOs in the analysis - The first
challenge, that data is under-utilised, is not limited to developing countries. But in addition,
when analysis that is done, it often takes place outside the NSO and is difficult for national
staff to explain and disseminate. This leaves a gap in the link between statistics production
on one side and use and analysis on the other. Staff members at NSOs are often
commenting that they do not really know for what purpose they are doing the data collection.
Lack of harmonisation - A variety of indicators and statistics are being published by
different organisations. SN has been working with how the same indicators, sometimes even
from the same surveys, are published with different results by the National Statistical System
and UN organisations. In addition to this come different indicators that apparently should tell
the same story, but differ in how they measure development over time and space.
Harmonisation, coordination and research into what causes the differences are needed.
Challenging coordination – Although the work with National Strategies for Development of
Statistics (NSDSs) and other plans is improving, long term plans are still difficult to uphold
because of poor coordination. There is no production of statistics without the resources for it,
and as such the support from external organisations like the UN agencies to under-financed
NSOs is necessary. Integrating more organisations better in planning processes could
increase efficiency in the total production of statistics, coordinate efforts to avoid overlap and
prevent the situations where other statistics is suffering because core staff is suddenly drawn
out of normal production to accommodate a sudden request.
For Statistics Norway to let staff members get leave to go and work for the UN through
NORCAP is extending the work done through Division for International Development
Cooperation in SN. It contributes to building national statistical systems, while also
supporting the information needs, time frames and purpose of the engagement from the
WFP.
In addition, the SN staff members bring back valuable knowledge of statistics areas,
statistical systems and the UN system to SN.
2.3
NORCAP7
The opportunity for SN people to work in WFP has come through NORCAP. NORCAP
strengthens the UN, international organizations and national governments through rapid
deployment of professional and experienced personnel. It is an emergency roster consisting
7
www.norcapweb.no
8
of 700 experts in different fields ready to deploy to international operations in as little as 72
hours. While the majority of the roster is aimed at emergency operations, other types of
qualifications are also recruited into the roster. Among these are people who work with
statistics. There is a group of people in the roster who work at Statistics Norway. The UN is
NORCAP’s largest partner, and there are partner agreements between NORCAP and 14 UN
organisations.
The seconded experts who work in WFP are on leave from Statistics Norway and employed
by NORCAP through the roster. The positioning of NORCAP as a long term partner to WFP
is opening doors for cooperation. It also simplifies issues of deployment, contracts and
security for Statistics Norway.
3. The approach to cooperation
3.1
Information
The first step in cooperation is to create a common understanding of why cooperation might
be relevant, what each partner’s needs and expectations are and what each partner can
bring to the cooperation.
WFP will usually have contacts in the NSS already, as a regular user of data. To establish
cooperation on the National Household Surveys, the following steps are recommended to
the country office VAM officers:
 Visit the relevant institutions, introducing ourselves and informing about what we
do and how we would like to cooperate.
 Inform the NSS about food security and nutrition statistics at coordination
meetings. The forum working with the National Strategy for Development of
Statistics (NSDS) or similar national plans is particularly relevant here.
 Actively share publications, methodologies, manuals
etc with (potential)
counterparts. Invite a wide variety of organisations to launches of analysis reports
WFP has been involved with—and actively share these reports through physical
and electronic mail.
 Participate in Technical Working Groups for HES surveys.
 Clarify the terms of the cooperation through developing a Letter of Understanding
in cooperation with the relevant NSS organization
3.2
Project
The second step is to produce something tangible together. Project cooperation is at the
core of the strategy. It results in outputs (analysis, reports) which clearly illustrate the
purpose of cooperation. Learning by doing is also our best tool for capacity development. It
is through practical work we can build trust between the organisations, as well as
understanding each other’s strengths and weaknesses.
WFP does not have capacity nor ambitions to be a provider of general capacity building in
statistics. The focus for WFP is on sharing knowledge on:
 what food security and nutrition analysis is used for (basis for ownership)
 what data to collect (questionnaire modules)
 how to generate certain indicators (data analysis), and
9
 how to interpret the results (report writing)
Most of the analysis work is not very complicated. It can be learned by statistics
professionals working together with an experienced analyst. This work is also supported by
sharing tools like template questionnaires, manuals, syntax files, reports and presentations.
Other statistical analysis techniques that WFP use, like for instance small area estimation,
are highly advanced. The ability to do them requires long term studies combined with
practical experience. VAM mostly outsources these tasks to external experts themselves
and do not attempt to enable anyone to do the analyses. The national statistical system may
choose to build this knowledge for themselves or continue to outsource it to national or
international experts.
However, the ability to understand and explain the core elements of an analysis is different
from being able to do it. WFP’s focus is to provide enough insight to explain what is done. It
is crucial for the statistics providers to know and be able to explain how indicators are
created when sharing it with politicians, media, programme implementers and other users.
3.3
Integration
The last step is to have food security and nutrition statistics become part of the regular
official statistical production and use in a country. This project aims at enabling the NSO and
other statistics producers to provide the food security and nutrition statistics to meet
demand.
One side of this is the integration of food security and vulnerability modules in national
surveys and supporting that analysis of this data becomes part of the regular official reports
from these surveys.
Beyond analysing the Household Expenditure Surveys for food security purposes, VAM Asia
is working actively to promote integration of the lighter indicators into annual household
surveys. The Food Consumption Score (FCS)8 is one such indicator. It is widely used as a
proxy of food insecurity and easy to collect for instance in quick surveys after natural or other
disasters. Having updated baseline on the FCS makes it much easier to assess the situation
in an area.
To further ensure integration of food security statistics in national statistics, the users must
be actively involved.
The recommendations to WFP country offices in this regard are:
 Actively promote the use of statistics when working with the government on food
security and nutrition
 Actively take part in the national statistical discussions to promote food security and
nutrition statistics, particularly the development of the National Strategy for
Development of Statistics (NSDS) or similar national plans
 To the extent relevant and possible, align WFP’s statistical needs with those of the
country, to focus resources on a limited number of central, high quality and
timely indicators.
8
The food consumption score measures the number of days during a week eight food groups were
consumed. The groups are weighted based on nutritional value.
10
 Use national statistics in WFP programme design, implementation and reports.
4. Results
4.1
Analysis and dissemination of food security statistics
Internally in WFP the marketing of this cooperation comes through providing useful outputs
that other WFP country offices and the relevant governments want to copy. Thematic reports
on food security and nutrition, food security atlases and lately short, easy access reports to
disseminate annually updated food security information have been produced and the interest
is spreading.
Below are some examples of how Household Expenditure Survey data has been used for
food security analysis by WFP and partners:



Ethiopia CFSVA 2014 - http://www.wfp.org/content/ethiopia-comprehensive-foodsecurity-and-vulnerability-analysis-2014
Tanzania CFSVA 2013 - http://www.wfp.org/content/tanzania-comprehensive-foodsecurity-vulnerability-analysis-2012-august-2013
Nepal Thematic Report on Food Security and Nutrition 2013 http://www.wfp.org/content/nepal-thematic-report-food-security-and-nutrition-march2013
Guidelines have also been published and other materials are under development to assist
VAM officers and their government counterparts in assessing the potential of national
household surveys, as well as doing the actual analyses.
4.2
Building relations and dialogue
The most important part of building relations happens in the countries between the WFP
country office and the national counterparts. VAM Asia held a workshop in Bangkok for
country offices in the region and their government counterparts in February 2014 to raise
awareness about opportunities for cooperation. While the workshop aimed at learning
methodologies and discussing products, an equally important goal was for the VAM officers
and NSS representatives to get to know each other better.
4.3
Integration of food security statistics in regular statistics production
There are two levels of integrating food security in regular official statistics. One is to have
analysis of existing data being done by the NSS and published as official statistics. The
other is to introduce new data collection tools, specifically aimed at food security issues.
An example is Cambodia. The ongoing Cambodia Socio-Economic Survey (CSES) collects
the standard consumption data through a diary and has also included the questions needed
to produce the Food Consumption Score (FCS) and the Coping Strategies Index. The CSES
is an annual survey with a core set of questions and adding different modules each year. In
2014 it contains the detailed data collection on consumption and expenditures. As a rather
light indicator to collect, the FCS can be used to monitor food security in the years between
the comprehensive expenditure surveys. Including it now makes it possible to do research
on how well the FCS actually describes the food security situation for different parts of the
11
Cambodian population. WFP and NIS in Cambodia have had workshops on how to analyse
the food security data and will continue with this when the 2014 data is ready to be analysed.
It should be pointed out that WFP is obviously not the only organisation interested in food
security statistics. Other large organisations and the governments themselves are also
supporting similar work in different countries.
4.4
Capacity building
Capacity building within this cooperation is also divided into two elements: One is capacity
building within WFP to enable the VAM staff in the country offices to work with the NSS on
the household surveys. The second element is capacity building aimed at the statistical
offices. Among offices where analysis workshops have taken place are the NSOs in Malawi,
Uganda, Nepal, Kenya, Ethiopia and Cambodia.
VAM has developed training materials to assist the staff in capacity building on food security
analysis. A number of presentations and other material are available on the VAM resources
website at resources.vam.wfp.org
12