The Food System Profile provides a summary of the main food system issues in Sierra Leone and highlights potential solutions for their sustainable and inclusive transformation. The result of a systemic analysis and stakeholders consultation, it is part of a large-scale assessment supported by the European Union, FAO and CIRAD in 50 countries.
Food systems are intimately linked to our lives – through the food we eat, our nutrition and health, our livelihoods, jobs, and the environment and natural resources of the planet. [Author] The main challenge for food systems is to produce nutritious food for all while preserving our biodiversity and environment and ensuring equitable distribution of wealth. [Author] This Food Systems Profile provides a summary of the main food system issues in Liberia and highlights potential solutions for their sustainable and inclusive transformation. [Author] It is the result of a systemic analysis and stakeholders' consultation that was part of a global assessment of food systems in over 50 countries, following a joint initiative by the European Union, FAO, and CIRAD which aims at catalysing the sustainable and inclusive transformation of food systems. [Author]
Food systems around the world face a triple challenge: providing food security and nutrition for a growing global population; supporting livelihoods for those working along the food supply chain; and contributing to environmental sustainability. Better policies hold tremendous promise for making progress in these domains.
Young people are key agents of change, with enormous innovation potential. FAO recognizes that youth are already at the frontline to build more sustainable agrifood systems and are best placed to rejuvenate the sector, acquire the knowledge and skills needed to innovate, uptake new technologies, and spearhead the digital transformation. The Organization provides support to countries to develop more youth-inclusive policies, strategies, investments and programmes, in order to enhance the overall well-being of young women and men. This compendium of good practices brings together snapshots of selected FAO's youth-specific projects, activities and products in support of the Rural Youth Action Plan (RYAP) first biennium of implementation (2021–2022).
The agriculture sector in Sierra Leone accounts for 60 percent of GDP and 58 percent of total employment. More than 58 percent of the country’s population live in rural areas and 86.1 percent of this population are engaged in smallholder subsistence agricultural production. Ten years of civil conflict and the Ebola epidemic in 2014 negatively affected food security and the country’s overall socio-economic situation. The country is particularly vulnerable to extreme events such as food chain crises and natural hazards which have a direct impact on food security and livelihoods. This evaluation aims to identify lessons learned and provide strategic recommendations on how FAO programmes can be better oriented in Sierra Leone. FAO’s overall contribution to developmental challenges was assessed in the priority areas defined in the CPFs covering 2012–16 and 2017–19. The evaluation comprised an examination of associated outcome areas related to support to smallholder commercialization, natural resources management, and effective response to disasters and increasing social productivity and resilience. The review also evaluated crosscutting issues, including gender equality and women’s empowerment, climate resilience, nutrition, capacity development and youth employment.The evaluation used different methods to collect the views of the beneficiaries and other stakeholders, such as structured focus group discussions, structured key informant interviews, direct observation, and workshops. The fieldwork took place with actors from projects across five districts: Bo, Bombali, Kenema, Kono, and Port Loko.The evaluation found evidence of significant and sustainable results in a range of areas of FAO’s activities, including policy-related work, from adoption of legislation to policy influence, piloting of approaches, and standards and regulatory frameworks. Likewise, results leading to livelihoods improvements, empowerment and adoption of more sustainable organizational practices, technologies and skills were found. Nevertheless, the programme failed to aggregate activities and interventions in a programmatic and coherent portfolio. FAOs capacity to deliver sustainable and consistent results, with strong partnerships and complementary action, was often undermined by lack of, or weak systems and functions. FAO should use the development of the new CPF as a way to re-design its strategic footprint in the country and reach its full potential, despite the limiting factors. To do this, FAO could consider adopting an area-based approach, implementing a programmatic, multi-stakeholder and cross sectoral adaptive approach based on regions/districts.
This report presents the design and results of a baseline survey with respect to a project of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) focusing on empowering women in small-scale fisheries. The project supports the implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication (the SSF Guidelines), giving particular attention to the post-harvest sector in seven countries in sub-Saharan Africa: Ghana, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Uganda, the United Republic of Tanzania, Madagascar, Namibia, and two countries in Asia: Indonesia and the Philippines. The results of the first five countries were published separately, as the project collected data in these countries in 2020—2021, with the additional four countries presented in this report added to the project in mid-2021.
Rapid population growth, poorly planned urbanization, and evolving agricultural production and distribution practices are changing foodways in African cities and creating challenges: Africans are increasingly facing hunger, undernutrition, and malnutrition. Yet change also creates new opportunities. The food economy currently is the main source of jobs on the continent, promising more employment in the near future in farming, food processing, and food product distribution. These opportunities are undermined, however, by inefficient links among farmers, intermediaries, and consumers, leading to the loss of one-third of all food produced. This volume is an in-depth analysis of food system shortcomings in three West African cities: Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire; Rabat, Morocco; and Niamey, Niger. Using the lens of geographical economics and sociology, the authors draw on quantitative and qualitative field surveys and case studies to offer insightful analyses of political institutions. They show the importance of “hard†? physical infrastructure, such as transport, storage, and wholesale and retail market facilities. They also describe the “soft†? infrastructure of institutions that facilitate trade, such as interpersonal trust, market information systems, and business climates. The authors find that the vague mandates and limited capacities of national trade and agriculture ministries, regional and urban authorities, neighborhood councils, and market cooperatives often hamper policy interventions. This volume comes to a simple conclusion: international development policy makers and their financial and technical partners have neglected urban markets for far too long, and now is the time to rethink and reinvest in this complex yet crucial subject.
Sierra Leone faces significant climate-related challenges, including rising temperatures, unpredictable precipitation patterns, and increased risks of extreme weather events, which threaten its infrastructure and coastal communities. This assistance assessed Sierra Leone's public investment management through the Climate Module of the Public Investment Management Assessment (C-PIMA). Sierra Leone was found to perform moderately well in some areas of the C-PIMA, but there were key gaps in other areas, often linked to weaknesses in the underlying public investment management framework. The assistance found that addressing these persisting core public investment management challenges is a prerequisite for effective climate-sensitive public investment management.
The USAID-funded Sierra Leone Feed the Future (FtF) Agriculture Project implemented by WorldFish has completed its initial pilot phase (July 2015 to September 2016). During this phase, the project identified and tested interventions to develop integrated agriculture-aquaculture (IAA) farming systems and associated value chains to enhance food, nutrition and livelihood outcomes for rural households in Tonkolili District. This project emphasizes rehabilitation and improvement of fish and rice farming systems combined with nutritious vegetable crops. The assessment of existing fish and rice value chains in Sierra Leone was a key component of this initial phase to improve understanding of current farming systems and identify opportunities for interventions to increase productivity and income and improve nutrition among rural households in Tonkolili District. This report presents the key findings of the fish value chain assessment, with an emphasis on the development of the aquaculture sector and recommendations for potential value chain interventions in marine and freshwater fisheries and aquaculture sectors.
