Additional Financing to the Food System Resilience Program, Phase 2 Sierra Leone

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Over the last decade, the combined impact of multiple drivers and shocks has led to a worrying increase in food and nutrition insecurity across West Africa. After decades of progress, both the number and the share of undernourished people climbed from 36.9 million (13.8% of the West African population) in 2005 to 59.4 million people (15.2%) in 2019. This significant rise stems from growing food demand, stagnant crop yields, accelerating climate change, growing insecurity and more recently, the COVID-19 pandemic. The latter has added further strain on the region's food system through government-imposed curfews, lockdowns, and border closures, causing food supply chain disruptions, food price increases, and income losses.Climate variability is a key force affecting West Africa’ agriculture sector and the region's food security and is expected to significantly increase under climate change. Recent study shows that climate conditions account for approximately 40% of the variation in cropland productivity over West Africa between 2001 and 2018 (Mechiche-Alami and Abdi, 2020). In the medium term, regional climate models consistently predict both fewer days of rainfall and shorter wet spells over 70 percent of the region’s land area coupled with higher precipitation intensity on wet days (Dosio et al. 2019). In the absence of adaptation, climate models anticipate median yield decreases of 20 percent for irrigated rice, 14 percent for sorghum, and between 5 and 7 percent for maize, soybeans, and groundnut by 2050 (Jalloh et al. 2013).Responding to the Kigali call for action, the West Africa Food System Resilience Program (FSRP) has been proposed is to increase preparedness against food insecurity and improve the resilience of food systems in participating countries. To contribute to the Kigali vision, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS), the West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF), and the World Bank have initiated preparations of FSRP. Led by ECOWAS and financed by the World Bank, this large-scale regional-level investment operation will make simultaneous investments in three interconnected priority intervention areas considered critical for enhancing food security and strengthening overall food system resilience in the near and mid-term. Due to the program's innovative cross-sectoral approach, the sum of FSRP's interventions will be larger than the sum of its parts. In other words, FSRP will allow the region to generate mutually reinforcing food security benefits which could not be achieved through a set of separate sectoral interventions.In the context of Sierra Leone, for which is this Additional financing is being prepared, the country has for long been chronically food insecure, experiencing recurrent episodes of acute need, which is being exacerbated by recent global economic crisis, including the war in Ukraine. The food security risks from the current crisis is growing and needs coordinated and urgent action. The Additional Financing from the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP) for Sierra Leone will augment FSFP resources to help Sierra Leone to address the most urgent needs. In particular, the AF will complement FSRP to contribute to improving food security, in the short-term, and help to build resilience in the population by scaling-up activities planned under the parent project.FSRP is designed to achieve greater regional impact and food system resilience gains than any number of individual national investments could achieve. Part of the program’s approach is to augment effective operational regional collaboration, which is a prerequisite for any type of information services on transboundary concerns such as extreme climate events or pest and disease outbreaks. To better monitor and forecast these occurrences, neighboring countries must pool resources and jointly provide analytical insights in addition to sharing data and information. Even specific actions confined to a single country will have a regional impact, produce spillover benefits, and require a coordinated response. Climate information can be analyzed and used more efficiently if it flows from global and regional forecasting centers to national and subnational forecast offices, following a cascading process paradigm. A regional collaborative information flow is also essential for tracking meteorological hazards, as West African countries rely either on their own national meteorological and hydrological services (NMHSs) or cover their national needs through services from a neighboring country or regional institution. FSRP priority areas translate into three components, including (i) C1: Digital Advisory Services for Agriculture and Food Crisis Prevention and Management; (ii) C2: Sustainability and Adaptive Capacity of the Food System’s Productive Base; and (iii) C3: Regional Food Market Integration and Trade. Component 1 is designed to: (i) enhance decision support systems with demand-driven information services in order to increase the effectiveness of agriculture and food crises prevention and management, integrating data and leveraging cutting-edge science, innovation, and technologies; and (ii) strengthen regional capacity and institutional sustainability, as well as capacity to adapt to climate change. The objective of Component 2 is to enhance the resilience of the food system’s productive base and contribute directly to the Great Green Wall Initiative. The proposed Additional Financing (AF) to FSRP for the Republic of Sierra Leone will be used to scale up interventions supported under this component to contribute to building resilience of the food systems for improved food security.The component 3 will serve as a low-carbon climate adaptation mechanism, by balancing food production across intra-regional spatial production volatility driven by climate change and increasing the pace of response to these climate-induced food shortages. Component 4 is a mechanism for financing eligible expenditures in the event of an emergency precipitated by a natural disaster. The CERC was activated on November 10, 2022 to support the implementation of Sierra Leone’s Quick Action Food Security Response Plan as part of the emergency response activities to address the food security risks being exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. The Proposed AF will provide additional resources to support the Government’s action plan to meet the immediate food and nutrition needs of the most vulnerable and acutely food insecure agricultural households and communities identified for support through the government-led targeting process. Component 5 is for Project Management which establishes coordination, management, and monitoring and evaluation system for the project. This component will focus on all aspects of project management including equipment and materials, compliance with fiduciary, procurement and safeguards (environmental and social) requirements, monitoring and evaluation (M&E) a full impact assessment with quasi-experimental design, knowledge management and communication. This component will be implemented by the Project Implementation Unit (PIU) under the oversight of a National Project Steering Committee (NPSC). On the regional level, the activities will be overseen by the Regional Steering Committee (RSC) under the leadership of ECOWAS and the component coordination units of ECOWAS (mandated to Regional Agency for Agriculture and Food), CILSS (for Component 1) and CORAF (for Component 2). On the national level, the activities will be performed by the PCIs. The proposed AF2 will scale up existing interventions under component 2, 4 and 5. Key activities will include digital tool, innovations, logistics and skill to strengthen the extension system for delivery of extension services; civil works for improved soil and water management (rehabilitati