Attachments
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The 2015/16 El Niño event seriously impacted the Eastern, Central, and Western regions of Uganda.
The region of Karamoja, including Teso, Lango, Acholi, Bukedi, West Nile, as well as parts of the districts along the Cattle Corridor reported massive crop failure, leading to little or no harvest, resulting in an evolving food crisis. The Government’s food security Early Warning system initially indicated that about 25 percent of the Ugandan population was experiencing severe shortage of food as a result of delayed and short lived rainfall; signaling a potential further deterioration of the affected regions’ food security situation.
By mid-November, the Cabinet sent out seven high level teams on a fact-finding and awareness-raising campaign to inform the public of the evolving food security situation. The team advised communities and local authorities about the need to implement sustainable preventive measures to optimize the use of food stocks and protect livelihoods, particularly those of households involved in agricultural activities.
The Cabinet’s fact-finding mission evidenced the need for carrying out a more systematic food security assessment and demanded that a report on the evolving food security situation be prepared and presented to the Cabinet. The Office of the Prime Minister took the lead in the preparation of the assessment.
In early December, 2016, the OPM’s Permanent Secretary convened a meeting with specialized technical agencies and concerned international humanitarian and development partners, who met at the World Bank Offices, and included senior representatives of the World Bank, DFID, USAID, WFP, FAO, FEWSNET, and MAAIF. During the meeting, the parties agreed on a joint food security assessment under the coordination of OPM’s Relief, Disaster Preparedness, and Management Department.
As requested by the Cabinet, the report provides an assessment of how many people in Uganda are currently affected by food insecurity, where these people are located, and how their socioeconomic status affects their ability to cope with the evolving acute food insecurity situation. This report incorporates the findings of the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) Acute Food Insecurity classification.
The IPC protocols have been adopted by the Government of Uganda as the main tool for informing and reporting on the status of chronic and acute food insecurity situations in the country. Accordingly, the consensus built around the IPC recommendations, the government and concerned partners will coordinate the emergency response and mitigation interventions. The IPC protocols consider key dimensions of food security: (i) availability, (ii) access and (iii) utilization of food evaluated at the present time.
The information collected, when combined with e.g. weather forecasts also allows to make projections under different scenarios on the stability of the core dimensions through time (see Box 1). Due to time and resource availability constraints to carry out a food security assessment at the household level, the joint assessment team agreed on a two-step assessment of acute food insecurity situation at the region level, based on data collected at the district level by the District Production Officers.