Famine Early Warning Systems Network 8 (FEWS NET 8) Data, Learning, and Communications Hub Redesign

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) has developed a Request for Information (RFI) to gather feedback and help strengthen the design for, and approach to, a new phase of activity for the Famine Early Warning Systems Network 8 (FEWS NET 8) Data, Learning, and Communications Hub (the Hub), implemented under FEWS NET, the Agency’s 37-year-old flagship food security analysis activity.  Over time, FEWS NET has established an extensive set of data, knowledge, analytic techniques, and processes for monitoring, measuring, and understanding the impacts of household food insecurity in the most vulnerable and food insecure populations of about 35 countries. In those countries, food security is generally limited, broadly speaking, by a lack of food access, largely driven by poverty, low local production, imperfect markets, a lack of entitlements and few options for protecting the household’s access to food outside of the

household’s own resources. Learning how to adequately monitor and measure these features in poor, hungry, and often relatively remote populations, has been a major success of FEWS NET and the broader food security community over the last few decades.In Phase 8 of FEWS NET, the scope of important new technical challenges for early warning and food security assessment has become progressively more apparent since the mid-2000s, when one of the first global food and fuel price crises appeared. National- and even local-level food, fuel and fertilizer markets are becoming more interconnected and interdependent, and nested within even larger regional, continental, and global market processes. In many respects, these markets have effectively become nodes in a global network of supply and demand.USAID welcomes feedback from all interested parties in response to this RFI. Small businesses and organizations operating within USAID’s Local Solutions framework are encouraged to reply. Consortia of organizations may be formed to respond to this RFI without limiting any consortium member’s ability to respond on its own to any subsequent Solicitation. Responses may be from legally registered organizations or consortia of organizations (in the U.S. and abroad), but responses from individuals will not be reviewed.Thank you for your interest in supporting USAID programs.