Agricultural
data can be difficult information to collect. However, the availability of
accurate and detailed information on agricultural production, processing and
consumption is extremely valuable when planning agricultural campaigns,
especially at the national level, to increase the overall availability of food
on the market.
Since
December 2007, AfricaRice has led an initiative to improve the timely
availability, reliability and relevance of rice statistics and information
needed for quality rice research, evidence-based policy formulation, and
monitoring and evaluation of rice-related investments in sub-Saharan Africa.
“We
always work with national partners, as it is the only viable route to cover the
whole continent,” said Dr. Aliou Diagne, AfricaRice
Program Leader for Policy, Innovation Systems and Impact Assessment.
When
the rice price crisis struck Africa in 2008, AfricaRice worked with many
partners to develop an emergency response and also to strengthen the ability to
develop policies so that the countries could avoid similar crises in the
future. Its project to develop the national rice statistics got support from the
Japanese government through the Emergency Rice Initiative (ERI) launched in the
wake of the crisis to help countries with seed systems and policy support
tools.
AfricaRice
collaborated with the national agricultural research systems (NARS) and the national
agricultural statistical services (NASS) of 21 country members of the Coalition
for African Rice Development (CARD) to collect large detailed rice statistics
and information from nationally representative samples.
CARD
was launched by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the
Association for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) in 2008 as a consultative
grouping of bilateral and multilateral development partners and African and
international institutions to double rice production in Africa by 2018.
As
part of ERI, AfricaRice facilitated capacity-building workshops to guide NARS
and NASS personnel in the design and implementation of surveys to collect
detailed and reliable crop-specific data.
After
a review of methods used across the 21 countries, participants were encouraged
to adopt new sample frames and sampling methodologies, with a view to regional harmonization
to ease the process of regional data aggregation and comparative analyses.
As
a direct result of these efforts, detailed data sets are now available for 20
participating countries, and the combined database is held at AfricaRice. These
data provide not only the most detailed view of the countries’ rice sectors at
one point in time, but will also provide a solid basis for analyzing future
trends as the countries continue to increase domestic rice production in pursuit
of self-sufficiency.
