Two flagship FAO Somalia information systems - the FSNAU Early Warning - Early Action Dashboard and SWALIM Programme - took centre stage at the FAO Regional Office for Africa Resilience Community of Practice, offering a tested, replicable model for turning evidence into timely action.
Across Africa, food security assessments, data systems and early warning mechanisms have attracted substantial investment. Yet one challenge endures: turning information into timely, coordinated and adequately financed action. The problem is rarely a shortage of data but the absence of a clear pathway that transforms evidence into decisions, and decisions into action.
Two flagship systems from FAO Somalia show how that gap can be closed. The Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit (FSNAU) Early Warning–Early Action Dashboard and the Somalia Water and Land Information Management (SWALIM) programme were each featured in successive sessions of the FAO Regional Office for Africa (RAF) Resilience Community of Practice (CoP) - the regional office’s flagship knowledge initiative, launched in June 2025 to ensure that what works in one country is not locked there, but shared, replicated and improved across the continent.
Opening one of the sessions, Maxwell Sibhensana, Deputy Director of FAO’s Office of Emergency and Resilience, reminded participants that resilience programming stands or falls on the quality of the evidence behind it. “Learning is not complete until it becomes a practice, and that practice becomes a lasting impact.”
With 266 million people acutely food insecure worldwide, he said, country offices must “start using evidence from the design of what we do” and be able to measure the impact of their actions. He commended FAO Somalia for its leadership - not only through these two systems, but through its Integrated Food Security Phase Classification work, now widely regarded as a gold standard.
Turning fragmented data into a single, trusted signal
Mandated by the Somalia Humanitarian Country Team in 2015 and launched in 2016, the FSNAU dashboard brings together data from a wide range of partners, including SWALIM, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, the United States Geological Survey, the World Health Organization, the health and nutrition clusters, UNICEF, UNHCR, and ACLED. Rather than producing the data itself, FSNAU acts as technical custodian – consolidating 22 indicators across climate, markets, health, nutrition, displacement and insecurity, and translating them into three simple signals, Normal, Alert and Alarm, updated monthly for every district.
That simplicity carries weight. In late 2025, the dashboard helped trigger Somalia’s Food Security Crisis Preparedness Plan, contributing to the mobilization of more than USD 100 million in response financing, including USD 50 million from the World Bank. By flagging deterioration early, and at the lowest administrative level, it allows partners to prioritize the districts most at risk and act before a crisis takes hold.
"Early warning only has value if it leads to early action," said Verenica Mutiro, Head of Programme for FAO Somalia.
Two decades of watching water, land and climate
Where the dashboard consolidates the signal, SWALIM generates much of the underlying evidence. Over almost 25 years, the programme has rebuilt Somalia’s national hydro-meteorological monitoring network - weather stations, river gauges and groundwater monitoring - and converted water, land and climate data into decisions for government, humanitarian and development partners alike.
“SWALIM bridges the gap between environmental data and operational decisions, helping governments and partners understand where risks are emerging, who may be affected and what action can still be taken,” said Ugo Leonardi, Technical Adviser in FAO Somalia.
The results are measurable. During the 2023 El Niño floods, more than 260 000 early warning messages helped evacuate 90 percent of the population at risk in Beledweyne, and analysis credited SWALIM’s warnings with a 43 percent reduction in flooded agricultural land in major flood years - protecting crops, incomes and households. Through its geospatial capabilities and the analysis of very-high-resolution satellite images, SWALIM provided independently verifiable evidence of charcoal production and stockpiling in southern Somalia, supporting UN Security Council monitoring of compliance with the Somalia charcoal-export ban. Another application of SWALIM’s geospatial unit is the identification of suitable growing conditions for at least 14 crops to guide investment and land-use planning.
For humanitarian partners, that reliability is the point. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs describes SWALIM and FSNAU as the country’s two most trusted data sources – equally credited by government, communities and partners – and central to Somalia becoming the first country in the world to pilot anticipatory action financing, with pre-agreed triggers releasing funds ahead of the next El Niño.
Owned locally, built to last
The common thread is not technology. Both systems work because of the governance behind them: trusted partnerships, agreed standards, transparent data sharing and, above all, local ownership. FAO Somalia is progressively transferring SWALIM’s functions to national institutions - establishing information management centres in Puntland and Somaliland and mentoring Somali technicians through real operational work - so that the country can generate, interpret and act on its own information.
That is precisely the model the Resilience CoP exists to spread. Replication does not mean copying Somalia wholesale; it means starting from what already exists in each country - mapping current data, agreeing a common framework with government, and building shared, decision-ready systems step by step. For FAO country offices across Africa, the Somalia experience offers a tested route from data to decision, and a reminder that resilience grows when trusted information reaches the right people, at the right time, before a shock becomes a crisis.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO): Regional Office for Africa.
