Food System Institutional Mapping and Capacity Assessment in Niger

By:
Nandita Srivastava, Aboubacar Hema, Suresh Babu, John M. Ulimwengu, Samuel Benin
Date:
2025
Resource type:
Reports and discussion papers

This report analyzes institutions within Niger’s food system across three capacity levels—enabling environment, organizational, and individual. Through extensive field data (339 interviews across regions), it identifies major strengths and weaknesses in policy leadership, institutional coordination, monitoring systems, research capacity, and human capital. Key findings show strong engagement in nutrition, food security, and agriculture, but significant gaps in environmental management, climate adaptation, cross-sectoral collaboration, governance, and data systems. The study highlights structural barriers such as corruption, weak inter-institutional networks, funding constraints, infrastructure challenges, and insufficient decentralized capacity. It recommends strengthening transparency, evidence-based policymaking, coordination mechanisms, M&E frameworks, technical skills, and inclusive approaches to address Niger’s food insecurity, malnutrition, and climate vulnerabilities.