About the CLiMIS
The Government of South Sudan (GOSS) through the Ministries of Agriculture and Forestry, and Animal Resources and Fisheries of the Republic of South Sudan is mandated to provide food security for its people and is working in partnership with FAO and other development partners to achieve this goal. Food security is a complex issue that is closely linked to health, sustainable economic development, environment, and trade. Food security is built on three pillars that include availability, use and access. Food access refers to the population having sufficient resources to obtain appropriate foods for a nutritious diet. Therefore, the price level in a country greatly affects its food security situation. Moreover, more and more people are depending on markets. Therefore, one of the major activities that the Government of southern Sudan aims to achieve is the setting up of an efficient, reliable, accurate market information system.
Monitoring of market prices of major agricultural and livestock products is critical to address the supply and demand pattern and access dimension of food security. Efficient, reliable, accurate and well analyzed market information is an important component of Early Warning systems for food security as it can assist in identifying areas of possible shortages which are reflected by higher prices and can highlight whether prices are above or below normal seasonal trends. It can also assist government planners in developing an understanding of the ways markets work.
The current scenario in South Sudan was that GOSS and State level institutions do not have adequate capacity to collect, analyse and disseminate crop and livestock market information. With the exception of a few GOSS institutions and some international agencies such as WFP and FAO which are involved in market data collection and analysis in selected localities, well coordinated and operational Market Information System (MIS) is non-existent in Southern Sudan. With this prevailing situation, one of the priorities that the Sudan Institutional Capacity Programme: Food Security Information for Action (SIFSIA) – South Sudan project planned to implement in 2008 in terms of food security information generation and analysis capacity building activities is to initiate establishment of Crop and Livestock Market Information System (CLiMIS) in south Sudan.
However, setting up an efficient, reliable, accurate market information system in developing countries such as South Sudan is not an easy task. Many systems have been set up with donor funds but have proven to be unsustainable once donor projects end. And where they have persisted, many have not provided useful information to their intended stakeholders.
In light of this, the Programme Support Unit (PSU) of SIFSIA jointly with the GOSS Ministries of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) and that of Animal Resources and Fisheries (MARF) of the Republic of South Sudan sought consultancy services for the setting up of a relevant, accurate, efficient and sustainable crop and livestock market information system to mainly support food security policy making processes and programming in South Sudan.