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Resal - Malawi/Mozambique

Since 1998, MTL Consult has been a founding participant in the EC's Resal (European Food Security Network) project, responsible for Malawi and Mozambique.

Background

With the aim, at a time of increasing food insecurity, of devising consistent longterm food security policy, the Commission has reformed its food security policy, focusing on

• introducing greater flexibility into the food aid instrument;
• defining new actions to support food security that aim at improving food security, and defining sectoral policies in this field with the governments concerned;
• improving the integration of aid and food security actions in development policy.

The Commission's new food security support policy must cope with food crises that are increasingly complex and vary greatly from one country to another. It consequently requires specific approaches, ongoing monitoring and control, and closer coordination between a country's government and the development partners.
Similarly, the programming of actions for the prevention and solution of food crises requires an accurate analysis in order to improve the congruence between the range of instruments at the Commission's disposal and the various situations of food insecurity.
This is the background to the setting up of the European food security network (Resal). Resal is made up of teams of European and local experts in food security who have the task of monitoring the situation in certain priority countries where structural food insecurity is chronic, and who are able to implement a food security policy.

Objectives

The central objective of Resal is to contribute to improving the food security of recipient countries within the framework of a consistent policy for action on the basis of closer dialogue with the government concerned. To that end, Resal's various teams need to coordinate in order to

• provide a tool for analysis and decisionmaking for actions to support food security and allocate food aid;
• help define, specify and monitor food security policy in the priority countries;
• improve the European Union's intervention in the field of food security;
• improve dialogue and coordination between the European Commission, the government concerned, donors, NGOs, and researchers for the definition and monitoring of food security policies;
• support local food security training.

The challenge for network members is to achieve a reconciliation between the two stated aspects of Resal's objectives:

• supporting the definition of food security strategies by networking. This means using Resal to create a forum for comparing analyses and information, an open and flexible forum for discussion that can provide proposals that respond to practical national and international constraints and changes.
• improving the programming and implementation of the European Union's intervention to support food security and integrating food aid in this intervention as a whole.

Resal Teams

Resal comprises:

• Nine Resal teams monitoring the following countries/regions (European Commission priority countries):
  • Bangladesh
  • Caucasus and Central Asia: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan
  • Central America: Honduras, Nicaragua
  • Ethiopia and Yemen
  • Haiti
  • Madagascar
  • Malawi and Mozambique
  • Sahel: Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Mauritania, Niger
  • South America: Bolivia, Peru

• Specialist Backup Experts
  • Each Resal team comprises one fulltime expert and one parttime expert (economist or agroeconomist) based in Europe (making regular field missions), and one local fulltime expert in each country moniored.

• A Coordination Team
  • The coordination team, based entirely in Europe, comprises one fulltime expert, one parttime expert (economist or agroeconomist) and one parttime information systems expert.

For Resal as a whole, additional informationseeking missions are envisaged according to the problems addressed. These missions will be determined with the agreement of the Commission. Further Information For further information, please visit the Resal website www.resal.org