Poverty and Hunger

Spatial Analysis Support to the CGIAR

In 2009, HarvestChoice partnered with the Spatial Team appointed by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) to support the Change process. The team was tasked to focus on one central data development sub-activity -- the generation of an internationally comparable sub-national poverty map. Using 24,000 sub-national points gathered from many previously unavailable national poverty maps (based on national poverty lines), maps were made on prevalence and headcount of population living on less than $1.25 and $2.00 per day (USD PPP 2005) in the developing world. This dataset was developed as part of the report on the "Geographic Domain Analysis to Support the Targeting, Prioritization, and Design of a CGIAR Mega-Project (MP) Portfolio".

Work continues to improve them, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa where extreme poverty is apparent (about 51% of the population, or 400 million, live on $1.25 a day or less). See map below on the number of people living under $1.25 a day. More maps are shown in HarvestChoice Labs.

More recent or higher spatial resolution data will be added  for West and Central Africa (Burkina Faso, Cote d'Ivoire, Central Afican Republic, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierre Leone).

HarvestChoice will also partner with the Consortium for Spatial Information (CSI) of the CGIAR to continue to develop the spatial data compiled for the Change process into a 'digital atlas' of agricultural development, assembled on behalf of the CGIAR, by the Consortium for Spatial Information (CSI) whose members had contributed to the data inventory compiled by the Spatial Team.

Provision of access to data

We provide access to macrodata on levels and trends in poverty and hunger using secondary data sources. This includes both widely accepted measures linked to monitoring progress of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) ($1ppp /day poverty, prevalence of undernourishment, incidence of child mortality), as well as newer measures, such as IFPRI's Global Hunger Index (GHI) (see the map and data below) and insights into different patterns in the severity of poverty using the World Bank's PovCalNet tool.