Jameel Observatory for Food Security Early Action

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10568/120556

Based at the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, Kenya, we are an international partnership led by the University of Edinburgh collaborating with the International Livestock Research Institute, Save the Children, the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and Community Jameel.

See more outputs at: https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/38135

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Now showing 1 - 20 of 66

A review of approaches to the integration of humanitarian and development aid: the case of drought management in the Horn of Africa
(Journal Article, 2025-01-24) Mohamed, Tahira Shariff; Crane, Todd A.; Derbyshire, Samuel F.; Roba, Guyo Malicha
Whether and how to link humanitarian assistance and long-term development aid are questions that have underlain polarized debates in policy, practical, and theoretical spaces over recent years. This is due in large part to the diversity of actors, institutional mandates, funding sources, programmes (themselves always changing), and operational dynamics that exist between the two domains. In pastoral areas of the Horn of Africa, which experience recurrent drought emergencies, integrating the two forms of assistance has been attempted in several instances, which have often been disjointed and have sought to grapple with an unpredictable terrain of shifting policies and program designs. Such challenges have been further compounded by a substantial disconnect between programming (across humanitarian aid and resilience building) and existing pastoralist practices and strategies comprising local social safety nets. Using a comprehensive literature review, this paper explores some of the practical strategies that have been implemented to integrate these two forms of assistance over recent years. It surveys implications that arise in relation to the question of how best to address persistent drought in the Horn of Africa. Interrogating mechanisms for enhancing aid efficiency and effectiveness including crisis modifiers and contingency planning, the paper examines what progress has been made in transitioning from reactive, short-term emergency response to long-term development and what barriers still exist. It also considers Community Managed Disaster Risk Reduction (CMDRR), a modality envisaged by many as a bridge for enhancing local ownership and thus sustainability of both kinds of intervention. In doing so, the paper argues that despite multiple policy shifts and the adoption of new frameworks (including, recently, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development's Drought Disaster Resilience and Sustainability Initiative - IDDRSI), when it comes to practical implementation, there has been little progress. We suggest that this is due in part to the well documented complexity of the aid system, and the forms of bureaucracy and upward accountability that make change extremely difficult, and in part to a lack of meaningful community participation in planning and practice.
Early warning systems save lives but more funding is critical
(Opinion Piece, 2025-01-21) Roba, Guyo Malicha
Sustainable groundwater development for the resilience of pastoralist communities in the Horn of Africa
(Newsletter Article, 2024-11) Roba, Guyo Malicha; Abass, Abdirahman; Jode, Helen de
Embracing local knowledge is the key to resilience in northern Kenya, not project box-ticking
(Opinion Piece, 2023-08-03) Scoones, Ian; Mohamed, Tahira Shariff
Effect of variation in gridded cattle diet composition on estimated enteric methane emissions in data sparse tropical regions
(Journal Article, 2025-01) Mutua, John Y.; Duncan, Alan J.; Robinson, Timothy P.; Fraval, Simon; Notenbaert, An Maria Omer; Watmough, Gary R.
Adapting the Women's Empowerment in Nutrition Index: Lessons from Kenya
(Journal Article, 2025-04) Lentz, E.; Jensen, Nathaniel D.; Lepariyo, Watson; Narayanan, S.; Bageant, E.
Women face a disproportionate burden of malnutrition and food insecurity. Research has shown that women's empowerment can buffer women against nutritional problems. This paper contributes to ongoing efforts to measure women's empowerment that are both context-sensitive and universal, focusing on the recently developed Women's Empowerment in Nutrition Index (WENI). Earlier research has shown it is both a valid construct and positively related to dietary and nutritional outcomes of women in South Asia. We establish that WENI is generalizable to agropastoral and pastoral Kenya, an area with substantially different livelihoods, food system, norms, and institutions than South Asia. We find that a locally contextualized WENI is strongly associated with women's body mass index and dietary diversity as well as household level food insecurity. We also present findings for two shorter variations of WENI: an abbreviated WENI (A-WENI) and a cross context WENI (CC-WENI). A-WENI contains a small subset of WENI indicators identified using machine learning with South Asian data and therefore is context-specific. CC-WENI does not contain indicators specific to the validation context. We find that they perform comparably well with caveats. Thus, as use of WENI expands we recommend adapting WENI for in-depth analyses of women's nutritional empowerment; using CC-WENI for cross-context comparisons; and using A-WENI for rapid appraisals of community level progress in a given context.
Productive livestock: Pastoralism, pathways to prosperity
(Poster, 2024-11) Jameel Observatory for Food Security Early Action
This poster was supervised by Tahira Mohamed and produced from a 'photovoice' project with young pastoralists in Kenya's camel production chain
Feed - essential year-round product: Pastoralism, pathways to prosperity
(Poster, 2024-11) Jameel Observatory for Food Security Early Action
This poster uses photos taken by Nick Danziger for the Jameel Observatory. It is co-produced with Community Jameel
Inclusion - leave no one behind: Pastoralism, pathways to prosperity
(Poster, 2024-11) Jameel Observatory for Food Security Early Action
This poster uses photos taken by Nick Danziger for the Jameel Observatory. It is co-produced with Community Jameel
Infrastructure - key to commerce and connections: Pastoralism, pathways to prosperity
(Poster, 2024-11) Jameel Observatory for Food Security Early Action
This poster uses photos taken by Nick Danziger for the Jameel Observatory. It is co-produced with Community Jameel
Inclusive value chains: Pastoralism, pathways to prosperity
(Poster, 2024-11) Jameel Observatory for Food Security Early Action
This poster was supervised by Tahira Mohamed and produced from a 'photovoice' project with young pastoralists in Kenya's camel production chain
Reliable infrastructure: Pastoralism, pathways to prosperity
(Poster, 2024-11) Jameel Observatory for Food Security Early Action
This poster was supervised by Tahira Mohamed and produced from a 'photovoice' project with young pastoralists in Kenya's camel production chain
Secure markets: Pastoralism, pathways to prosperity
(Poster, 2024-11) Jameel Observatory for Food Security Early Action
This poster was supervised by Tahira Mohamed and produced from a 'photovoice' project with young pastoralists in Kenya's camel production chain
Healthy animals: Pastoralism, pathways to prosperity
(Poster, 2024-11) Jameel Observatory for Food Security Early Action
This poster was supervised by Tahira Mohamed and produced from a 'photovoice' project with young pastoralists in Kenya's camel production chain
Peace and security: Pastoralism, pathways to prosperity
(Poster, 2024-11) Jameel Observatory for Food Security Early Action
This poster was supervised by Tahira Mohamed and produced from a 'photovoice' project with young pastoralists in Kenya's camel production chain
Water - critical shared natural resource: Pastoralism, pathways to prosperity
(Poster, 2024-11) Jameel Observatory for Food Security Early Action
This poster uses photos taken by Nick Danziger for the Jameel Observatory. It is co-produced with Community Jameel
Livestock - the backbones of pastoralism
(Poster, 2024-11) Jameel Observatory for Food Security Early Action
This poster uses photos taken by Nick Danziger for the Jameel Observatory. It is co-produced with Community Jameel
How do women’s empowerment metrics measure up? A comparative analysis
(Journal Article, 2024-11) Bageant, Elizabeth; Lentz, Erin; Narayanan, Sudha; Jensen, Nathaniel D.; Lepariyo, Watson
Research has identified women’s empowerment as a critical factor for nutritional outcomes and a priority area for understanding women’s mental health status. At the same time, there is no consensus on how empowerment should be measured. The surrounding debate has produced several empowerment metrics that are widely used, yet we know little about whether they can be substituted for one another or their respective strengths and weaknesses. Using data collected from a single sample of women from rural, northern Kenya, we compare five empowerment metrics: The Project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) and associated Health and Nutrition Module (HN), Women’s Empowerment in Nutrition Index (WENI), Women’s Empowerment in Livestock Index (WELI), and the Survey Based Women’s Empowerment Index (SWPER). The metrics have shared theoretical origins and are commonly used in the food, nutrition and health spaces to study rural women’s lives across low- and middle-income countries. We examine the metrics’ characteristics, distributions, pairwise correlations and capacity of each metric to predict outcomes often associated with the concept of empowerment: body mass index (BMI) and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). We find striking differences between these common empowerment metrics. The metrics’ correlations with one another are highly variable as are the predictive capacities for both outcomes. Further, our analysis finds that the choice of metric can dramatically influence which individuals are identified as empowered. In sum, our results suggest that while these metrics are used in remarkably similar ways to understand rural women’s empowerment and its consequences, unless they are computed with many identical survey questions, the metrics do not capture the same underlying concept and are not interchangeable. We recommend that our work be replicated elsewhere and caution should be taken when implementing and interpreting research using these metrics, as findings may be highly sensitive to the choice of metric.
COP29: Drought warnings save lives, what about livelihoods?
(Opinion Piece, 2024-11-12) Hassan, Rahma; Derbyshire, Samuel F.
Marro: Enhancing resilient livelihoods through women's mutual support in Kenya's drylands
(Presentation, 2024-08) Mohamed, Tahira Shariff

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