Preview of the Food Security & Nutrition Aid Analyser

The UN Food Systems Summit+4 served as a backdrop to the soft launch of the Food Security and Nutrition Aid Analyser. David Laborde, Co-Chair of Hesat2030, guided a select group of participants through the main features of the new platform in Addis Ababa during an interactive session. 

Enthusiasm for the platform was high with two country representatives, including the Minister of Agriculture from Sierra Leone, expressing their interest in using the platform on a trial basis to evaluate official development assistance (ODA) in their countries.

Why the new Aid Analyser?

Because no common definition for food security and nutrition aid exists, it is difficult to track the amount of aid, including grants, loans and other financial flows, dispersed for food security and nutrition. With over 10 working definitions developed, including institutional frameworks, such as the Aquila Food Security Initiative, and research projects such as Ceres2030, estimates vary widely – from USD 3.8 billion to USD 54 billion.

Different estimates on food security aid volumes

As a result, agreement lacks on how much is spent, where it is spent, and what it is spent on. This affects the analysis to define which donors provide the most funding, which countries receive the most funding and what priority areas the funding targets.

With a better understanding of how and where aid is dispersed, donor countries can better coordinate their aid, reduce duplication, close funding gaps and ensure that resources are aligned with country priorities and needs.

Key features of the Aid Analyser

The Food Security and Nutrition Aid Analyser offers an interactive platform to understand the aid allocated for food security and nutrition, including how much aid has been disbursed, by whom and where using the different definitions available. The aid, which includes grants, loans and other official financial flows, can be categorised by governments as well as aggregated by donor groups such as the G20 or G7 countries. Recipients can be searched by region, sub region or country.

Homepage of the Food Security and Nutrition Aid Analyser

With this information, it is possible to create an ODA profile for individual countries and donor governments to understand how much has been allocated and to which intervention areas as defined by different categories including the CAADP Framework, the FAO Global Roadmap, and the OECD DAC sector codes. 

To understand the evolution of aid, trends can be analysed over time with data available since 2015. This includes searches by donor, recipient countries and definition to understand the type of financial flows (i.e. grants or loans), how much donors are contributing either as an absolute volume or percentage of their Gross National Income, how much is actually disbursed and the amounts for food security allocated for either long-term development or emergency relief. 

In addition to providing data on profiles and trends, the Aid Analyser also guides users for future decision making. For example, it allows users to understand opportunities for better collaboration by providing a snapshot of how funding is allocated across different priority areas. Using the OECD policy markers, it is possible to understand how aid spending addresses cross-cutting issues such as climate mitigation and adaptation, biodiversity and gender. 

The Aid Analyser also simulates the impact of aid cuts or increases and how it will impact recipient countries. Finally, using Ceres2030 as a reference framework, it highlights the gap between current disbursements and projected needs, the countries where portfolio shifts may be most urgent, and the degree to which different regions rely on aid to meet their food security and nutrition goals.

Interest from partner countries

During the preview of the Food Security and Nutrition Aid Analyser in Addis Ababa, HE Henry Musa Kpaka, Minister of Agriculture from Sierra Leone and Ianja Raolisoa, Head of Food Security and Nutrition at the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock in Madagascar expressed an interest in accessing this new platform. 

David Laborde and H.E. Henry Musa Kpaka

For these representatives, the platform will help them to understand how much aid has been allocated to their countries since 2015, the type of aid and the priority areas targeted by the different donors. Their use of the platform by these countries is expected to begin in September.