This is a summary of the article published in Significance Magazine, Volume 22, Issue 5, September 2025. Copyright © 2025, The Royal Statistical Society.
Read the full article here (subscription required).
"Which number should I give my president?” This question came from a director-general of a national statistical office (NSO) who pulled us aside during a coffee break at the 2023 Global Data Festival in Uruguay. The organisation we represent, the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, is engaged in the global policy discourse on food security, and so he hoped we might have an answer to his dilemma.
“The president wants solid figures on our food security situation for a major policy address next month,” he explained. “But I’ve got the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) saying one thing, the World Food Programme (WFP) reporting another, plus all these regional dashboards and Sustainable Development Goals targets. They’re all telling different stories.”
His frustration wasn’t just about statistics. This was political reality in action. When presidents and ministers need clear facts to guide critical decisions, a maze of competing indicators doesn’t help – it hinders. And in a region where millions face hunger daily, clarity isn’t just administratively convenient, it’s essential.
Food security data remains a fragmented puzzle. NSOs, agriculture ministries, United Nations agencies, non-government organisations, and development partners all collect their own data using different methods, timelines, and definitions. These systems rarely talk to each other, leaving decision-makers in a fog of numbers.
The failures of fragile and fragmented data systems
When the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) talks about “food security”, they mean a state where everyone has reliable access to enough safe, nutritious food that matches both their needs and cultural preferences. It’s about more than just growing enough crops, it’s about accessibility, stability, and proper utilisation.
Botswana’s digital agriculture census: A case study in collaborative data transformation
Botswana offers a compelling example of how investment in data systems, when grounded in country priorities and enabled by strategic partnerships, can lead to more effective policy-making.
The Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data began working with Statistics Botswana following a formal request for collaboration. From the outset, our approach was to place national leadership at the centre. The process began with written inputs and evolved into a two-day, in-person national dialogue. This event brought together key actors from the agriculture and environment sectors to assess the current state of data systems and define shared priorities across institutions.
Capacity-building was equally critical. The training sessions did more than prepare enumerators – they helped build long-term institutional knowledge. Staff gained the ability to maintain and adapt the digital tools, positioning Botswana to apply similar systems for future data collection exercises. This investment in human capital created a stronger, more self-reliant foundation for the country’s data ecosystem.
As a result of these improvements, Botswana’s agricultural data is on its way to being more accurate, timely, and representative. With better data, policy-makers are able to more accurately target agricultural inputs, tailor extension services, and identify areas most vulnerable to climate-related disruptions. This will mark a shift from reactive policy-making to proactive, data-informed decision-making that aligns more closely with national development goals.
Connecting the data for a clearer picture: Ghana’s approach
Ghana offers a compelling example of how the proliferation of international indicators and project-based data systems can complicate the numbers while trying to support national efforts to strengthen food security. The challenge was not a lack of data, but rather the presence of numerous, often overlapping metrics introduced through externally driven projects with limited scope, scale, or alignment with national priorities. Some focused on specific crops simply because funding was available for them, rather than because they reflected local needs. The result was a fragmented data landscape with limited interoperability and little clarity on how different indicators should be used in practice.
Working with Ghana’s statistical leadership, a national convening was organised with relevant stakeholders focused specifically on understanding the differences between international food security metrics. This convening brought together key players from across the data ecosystem, including statistical specialists from Rome-based agencies to explain what the Food Insecurity Experience Scale measures and representatives from the WFP and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) to clarify how and why they use different measurements in their programming and reporting.
From national to global: The Rome Data Champions
Addressing global food insecurity requires international decision-making grounded in the realities of national agricultural data systems. Yet translating national data priorities into international policy influence remains a challenge, especially for countries with limited diplomatic capacity. The Rome Data Champions network was created to help bridge this gap.
Harvesting the data dividends
The path to a food-secure future begins not in the field but with the data that illuminates our understanding of it. By investing in better agricultural data systems, African countries can target interventions more precisely, allocate resources more efficiently, and design policies that address the root causes of food insecurity.
As these stories show, effective change to agriculture data systems and food security policies, at the international and local levels, needs to be led by the countries affected. Ensuring that national policy-makers are at the forefront of the data revolution will ensure better national coordination, sustainable change, and maximise impact for the local context and development goals.
As global food crises become more complex and interconnected, the quality of agricultural data and the inclusivity of decision-making processes based on that data will only grow more important. By strengthening the bridge between national data systems and global policy forums, initiatives such as the Rome Data Champions help ensure that international responses to food insecurity reflect a broader range of country perspectives and realities. Meanwhile, initiatives such as the Power of Data are key to supporting the development of national data partnerships to unlock the data dividend.
Read more in the full article, published in Significance Magazine, Volume 22, Issue 5, September 2025 (subscription required).
