The Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) is leading a regional push to build stronger, more resilient food security and nutrition systems across its Member States. Through collaborative strategies, innovative programs, and specialized institutions, IGAD coordinates efforts to ensure that everyone in the region has access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food. This article outlines IGAD’s key frameworks and initiatives – from regional strategies to on-the-ground programs – and how its institutions work together to promote sustainable, climate-resilient, and inclusive food systems that reduce hunger, improve nutrition, and enhance livelihoods.
Regional Strategies for Food Security and Nutrition
IGAD has adopted several regional frameworks to guide and unify Member States’ actions on food security and nutrition:
- IGAD Food Safety Strategy (2022–2027) – Endorsed in 2024, this strategy provides a comprehensive framework for countries to improve food safety systems and harmonize standards. By aligning regulations and practices, IGAD helps remove food-safety-related barriers to regional trade, ensuring all food in the region is safe .
- IGAD Regional Food and Nutrition Security Strategy (2025–2034) – This ten-year strategy was recently endorsed by IGAD Member States as a long-term roadmap for resilience. It aims to strengthen emergency response and recovery mechanisms, boost disaster preparedness and agricultural trade, and promote inclusive approaches that empower women and youth. The strategy aligns with global goals and addresses challenges like climate change, economic shocks, and natural disasters that threaten the region’s food security.
- IGAD Food Security and Nutrition Response Strategy (2020–2022) – At the onset of crises like COVID-19 and a desert locust invasion, IGAD launched a short-term response strategy to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe. This 2020 strategy focused on crisis prevention, resilience building, and coordinated emergency responses. It guided immediate actions such as supporting vulnerable communities, safeguarding pastoral livelihoods, and facilitating regional food trade during the crisis period.
These frameworks provide a coordinated regional approach, ensuring that all IGAD countries work toward common goals. By adopting joint strategies, Member States can pool resources, share information, and respond together to threats—whether food safety hazards or droughts—rather than acting alone. IGAD’s leadership in crafting these policies means that food security efforts in the Horn of Africa and surrounding areas are not piecemeal, but part of a cohesive regional vision.
Coordinating Resilient Food Systems through the FSRP
IGAD also plays a central role in implementing these strategies on the ground through the Food Systems Resilience Programme (FSRP), a World Bank-supported initiative spanning Eastern and Southern Africa. The FSRP adopts a regional lens to strengthening national food systems, recognizing that issues like climate change, pests, or market disruptions do not stop at national borders. IGAD coordinates interventions under the FSRP so that countries learn from each other and tackle shared challenges together.
A core aspect of the FSRP is technology and knowledge exchange. IGAD and its partners provide platforms for member countries to share best practices and innovations for agriculture. For example, regional forums under FSRP bring together agriculture experts, climate scientists, and food security leaders to discuss solutions. Through these exchanges, countries can adopt cutting-edge approaches – from drought-tolerant crops to digital farming tools – that have proven successful in similar environments. The program highlights how digital tools like precision agriculture, real-time climate data, and AI can enhance productivity, reduce post-harvest losses, and improve market access for farmers. By championing agricultural innovation, IGAD helps farmers across the region adapt to climate variability and boost food production.
Another key FSRP focus is enhancing cross-border trade and market integration. IGAD is driving policy harmonization among its Member States – including aligning sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) standards and food safety regulations – so that farmers and traders can sell their products more easily across borders. Removing trade barriers and improving compliance with international standards makes it possible for surplus harvests in one country to fill deficits in another. This regional trade not only stabilizes food supply and prices, but also increases incomes for farmers and pastoralists who can reach wider markets. Through the FSRP, IGAD and partners use tools like “trade scorecards” to identify and address bottlenecks, aiming for seamless cross-border movement of grains, livestock, and other food products . In short, the FSRP strengthens national food systems by viewing them as an interconnected regional network – one where information, technology, and goods flow across IGAD countries for the benefit of all.
By fostering collaboration, IGAD’s FSRP is building a resilient food system that can withstand shocks. Droughts, floods, or conflicts in one country are mitigated by regional early warning and support. If one area faces crop failure, regional trade can prevent famine by sourcing food from elsewhere. The FSRP’s coordinated approach thus amplifies each country’s efforts, creating a buffer against crises that would overwhelm any single nation. This embodies IGAD’s core mandate: to promote regional cooperation for greater collective strength.
IGAD’s Specialised Institutions Supporting Food Systems
To translate strategies into action, IGAD relies on several specialized institutions and programs that address different facets of food security, nutrition, and resilience. These institutions provide technical expertise, data, training, and coordination in their respective focus areas. Together, they tackle the various drivers of food insecurity – from climate extremes to animal diseases – in a holistic way. Below are key IGAD institutions and their roles in building sustainable and inclusive food systems:
Climate Prediction and Early Warning: ICPAC
The IGAD Climate Prediction and Application Centre (ICPAC) provides climate services that are critical for farmers and pastoralists. As the region’s climate early warning center, ICPAC generates seasonal forecasts, weather advisories, and hazard alerts. This timely climate information helps governments and communities anticipate and prepare for events like droughts, floods, or poor rains. For example, ICPAC’s seasonal rainfall outlooks for the Greater Horn of Africa inform farmers when to plant and advise herders on likely water and pasture conditions . By translating climate science into practical early warnings, ICPAC enables farmers to make proactive decisions – such as planting drought-tolerant crops or destocking livestock before a harsh dry season. These forecasts and advisories are shared across IGAD countries, ensuring a coordinated response to climate risks. In addition, ICPAC supports the development of user-friendly tools (like the East Africa Hazards Watch platform) and works with national meteorological services to strengthen local early warning systems. Through ICPAC’s work, IGAD’s strategies are underpinned by robust climate data, helping reduce the threat of weather-related food crises.
Resilience in Drylands and Pastoral Livelihoods: ICPALD
Many of IGAD’s Member States have vast arid and semi-arid lands where pastoralist communities raise livestock. The IGAD Centre for Pastoral Areas and Livestock Development (ICPALD) focuses on these dryland areas, promoting sustainable livelihoods for pastoralists and agro-pastoralists. Established in 2012, ICPALD’s mandate is to facilitate equitable livestock development in arid regions, in ways that are sensitive to gender, conflict, and the environment . In practice, ICPALD works on improving animal health, rangeland management, and market access for livestock keepers. One of its notable efforts has been coordinating cross-border initiatives to control livestock diseases. For instance, ICPALD helped neighboring countries synchronize vaccinations against transboundary animal diseases, reducing outbreaks in border areas . This cooperation not only protects animal health but also allows pastoralists to move and trade their cattle, camels, and goats across borders without spreading disease. As a result, livestock trade has grown, benefitting communities that rely on selling animals and animal products. ICPALD has also supported the production of animal feed (fodder) in pastoral regions to sustain herds during droughts , and contributed to policies like the regional transhumance protocol to manage cross-border livestock movement. By addressing the unique challenges of drylands, ICPALD helps build resilience against drought and climate shocks, ensuring pastoral communities can maintain their livelihoods and food security.
Pastoralists and their livestock benefit from IGAD’s support in animal health, water access, and cross-border trade, bolstering resilience in arid and semi-arid lands.
Agricultural Policy Support: IGAD CEAP
Effective policies and institutions are the backbone of any sustainable food system. IGAD’s Centre of Excellence for Agricultural Policy (CEAP) plays a pivotal role in advising and strengthening national agricultural policies across the region. By conducting research, offering training, and convening policy dialogues, IGAD CEAP helps Member States design evidence-based policies that increase agricultural productivity and resilience. This includes guidance on sustainable land management, crop diversification, irrigation, and market development, among others. IGAD’s support to national agricultural policy ensures that countries’ efforts are coordinated and mutually reinforcing . For example, through the African Union’s CAADP framework, IGAD (with partners like FAO) assists countries in reviewing their agricultural investment plans and aligning them with regional goals. The Centre promotes the harmonization of agricultural policies, so that issues such as seed quality standards or fertilizer regulations are approached similarly across the region, facilitating cooperation and trade. By strengthening policy and institutional capacity, IGAD CEAP ensures that the technical gains from other programs (climate information, new technologies, etc.) are embedded in supportive national systems. Ultimately, this leads to more coherent strategies to reduce hunger and malnutrition, as governments enact reforms backed by regional expertise and peer learning.
Veterinary Education and Animal Health: ISTVS
Healthy livestock are essential for food security in the IGAD region, providing meat, milk, and income to millions. To improve animal health and services, IGAD established the Sheikh Technical Veterinary School and Reference Centre (ISTVS) in Somaliland. ISTVS is a unique institution that offers training and research in veterinary sciences tailored to arid and semi-arid environments . It builds local human capacity by educating veterinarians, para-veterinarians, and community animal health workers who can serve across IGAD countries. Through its programs, ISTVS equips graduates with practical skills to diagnose and treat livestock diseases common in the region, administer vaccinations, and advise herders on animal husbandry and rangeland management. This is crucial in a region where outbreaks of diseases like Rift Valley fever or foot-and-mouth disease can devastate livelihoods. ISTVS also acts as a reference center, conducting research on tropical animal diseases and developing solutions (such as improved vaccines or diagnostic tools) suitable for resource-limited settings. By bolstering veterinary education and outreach, IGAD improves the health and productivity of livestock herds. Healthier herds mean more reliable milk supplies for families, higher market value for animals, and safer trade (as fewer animals carry transboundary diseases). In turn, this contributes to both better nutrition – through animal protein – and higher incomes for pastoralists and farmers, strengthening overall food security.
Drought Resilience and Sustainability: IDDRSI
Recurring droughts have historically been one of the biggest threats to food security in the Horn of Africa. After a severe drought in 2010–2011 led to famine in parts of the region, IGAD launched the IGAD Drought Disaster Resilience and Sustainability Initiative (IDDRSI) as a comprehensive effort to end drought emergencies . IDDRSI is a platform that brings together IGAD Member States, development partners, UN agencies, and communities to coordinate resilience projects across the region. The initiative recognizes that drought impacts – water scarcity, crop failure, livestock losses – cannot be solved by emergency aid alone; they require long-term development approaches and regional coordination. Under IDDRSI, IGAD helps countries implement programs in areas like water infrastructure (e.g. building cross-border water wells and irrigation), sustainable land management, livelihood diversification, and conflict resolution over natural resources. It also emphasizes early warning and preparedness: through IDDRSI, IGAD strengthens regional climate monitoring (with ICPAC’s data) and links it to early action plans in each country. Importantly, IDDRSI has fostered a spirit of cooperation among countries to support one another during droughts – for instance, by sharing surplus food stocks or allowing pastoralists to access pasture across borders in times of crisis. By coordinating these efforts at national, cross-border, and regional levels , IDDRSI has steadily built up the region’s ability to withstand drought. Communities that once lost everything in a bad dry season are now better equipped with water storage, drought-tolerant crops, or alternative incomes that carry them through. This reduces the need for costly humanitarian interventions and keeps development on track even when rain fails. In the long run, IDDRSI’s work is paving the way for sustainable development in IGAD’s drylands, where people can thrive despite a harsh climate.
Toward Sustainable and Inclusive Food Systems
Across all these initiatives and institutions, IGAD serves as a regional convener and coordinator, ensuring that efforts in one sector complement those in another. The strategies provide the vision and targets – safe food, zero hunger, improved nutrition – while programs like the FSRP and IDDRSI turn that vision into reality through projects on the ground. Meanwhile, specialized institutions like ICPAC, ICPALD, CEAP, ISTVS and others supply the data, technical know-how, and capacity building needed to make lasting progress. This integrated approach means that climate early warnings can trigger drought mitigation plans via IDDRSI, or that a new livestock policy developed with CEAP’s guidance can be enacted alongside animal health training from ISTVS and market support from ICPALD. Each piece reinforces the others.
Crucially, IGAD’s regional leadership ensures no country is tackling these challenges alone. By pooling resources and knowledge, Member States can achieve more together – whether it’s coordinating cross-border food deliveries during a crisis or collectively negotiating support from international partners. The outcome that IGAD strives for is a food system that is sustainable (protecting the environment and natural resources), climate-resilient (able to absorb and adapt to shocks), and inclusive (benefiting all populations, including rural farmers, pastoralists, women, and youth). This vision supports not only the goal of ending hunger but also improving nutrition (by diversifying diets and ensuring food safety) and boosting livelihoods (through profitable agriculture and trade).
IGAD’s efforts are already yielding results on the ground: communities are better prepared for hazards, regional food markets are growing, and policies are aligning with long-term resilience. Challenges remain, from climate change to conflicts, but IGAD continues to champion a united regional response. With strong frameworks, active knowledge exchange, and effective institutions, the IGAD region is on a path toward greater food security. By working together, IGAD and its Member States are building a future where droughts or other shocks no longer mean devastation, but are met with resilience – a future where all people in the region can enjoy food security, good nutrition, and sustainable livelihoods for generations to come.
