PREFACE

This document is the result of intensive collaboration between an interdisciplinary team of researchers at Wageningen University and Research Centre (WUR), policy-makers at the Netherlands Ministry of Agriculture, Nature Management and Fisheries (LNV), the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs (DGIS), and FAO staff. We would like to thank Marcel Vernooij and Co Neeteson of LNV, Frank van der Staaij of DGIS, and Maarten Immink and René Verduijn of FAO for their valuable comments. We appreciate the financial support from LNV, FAO and WUR.

The driving force for all those involved was the contribution that they could make to the ultimate goal of improving food security and reducing poverty. Though the process was time consuming, it has been a rewarding exercise. We have reviewed 75 country reports that describe the national development situation, perform analyses and provide recommendations on how to improve development problems like food insecurity and poverty. It is very encouraging to realize that so much national and international effort is put into the development of country reports that aim at providing coherence on these sector-overriding themes.

Our results show that achieving coherence appears to be a difficult task. Though various components of food security and poverty are dealt with in the country reports, no comprehensive overviews are provided. Little coherence can be found in the sequence of priority setting, analysis and recommended policy measures. Little use is made of available data at disaggregated subnational levels, and of methods for analysing and presenting data. The reports are also not clear about the extent to which interest groups participated in the development process of the country reports. Ensuring the participation of such interest groups could facilitate the implementation of recommendations made in the reports.

We hope that this review document will contribute to the development of strong country reports that will, in the end, serve the process towards mitigation of food insecurity and poverty. The research team would therefore like to pursue its effort to contribute to this valuable process of CCA and PRSP development. While we have performed a desk study in this phase, future activities should be directly linked to national country teams that are responsible for the development of the country reports.

We hope that the information provided in this report will serve the user well.

Prem Bindraban^[1]
Hanneke Aalbers
Henk Mool
Inge Brouwer
Marianne van Dorp
Kees Houtman
Marije Brouwer
Monique Zuurbier
Emmy Hagenaars