Sauti Africa

This pilot project aimed to promote price data collection in relevant marketplaces and develop methodologies to explore the potential of forecasting food insecurity. By producing policy-relevant tools for food price monitoring and early warning/response to food crises, the overall objective of the pilot was to support DRC decision-making capacities related to promoting food security in Kenya.

This was done by building an automated system that allowed DRC to capture and display recent daily market prices for products in areas of interest within Kenya and build a market intelligence system that allowed DRC to forecast market prices for products in areas of interest within Kenya.

The project made an impact within a very short time. Users made price and supplier information requests to the market prices platform. Users also received forecasted price data for real-time marketplace/products that otherwise would not have been available.

On sustainability, all project deliverables will continue to operate after the project-end. Due to the automated nature of the deliverables, DRC will continue to be able to access the market monitoring and forecasting dashboard, and beneficiaries in the target locations will continue to be able to input market prices, access market price information, and access and register to the supplier directory on the relevant USSD mobile platforms.

As a result, the project’s impact will extend beyond the timeframe of this pilot. On scalability, this pilot has revealed significant opportunities to extend these innovations to increase reach and meaningful impact. Further, the complementary design of this project’s deliverables suggests that each component, should development be continued, is likely to have a multiplier effect on DRC programming.