Title: Data collection in fragile states: Food security
Journal: Nature Food (2025)
Authors: S Kibriya, N Fatema
Abstract: Fragile states face a persistent cycle of vulnerability driven by inadequate infrastructure, weak institutions, and dependence on local agriculture—exacerbated by conflict, food price volatility, and global crises. These conditions severely constrain traditional data collection methods, such as in-person surveys, leaving food and human security monitoring reliant on outdated or incomplete information. Recent advances in satellite imagery and artificial intelligence offer promising alternatives such as machine learning to estimate food availability as demonstrated in the case of Yangon, Myanmar. Emerging tools have also detected conflict-induced agricultural disruptions through image processing and identified food-borne disease outbreaks via social media signals. Although machine-learning algorithms are still in their early stages, they can potentially be improved to include broader applications such as tracking crop areas, fishing activity or granaries, or to other contexts such as monitoring ethnic marginalization or endangered species.
Title: Science for Africa’s future food security the entangled crisis of escalating conflict and eroding food security in the Sudano-Sahelian Region: 1994–2024
Journal: Food Security (2025)
Authors: Kibriya, S., & Fatema, N.
Abstract: The Sudano-Sahelian region is mired in an escalating crisis where armed conflict and food security are intertwined. This article analyzes the evolving impact of conflict on food security across this domain from 1994–2024. Utilizing the four pillars of food security (availability, access, utilization, stability), it examines how the shifting nature of conflict—from localized disputes to transnational jihadist insurgencies, banditry, and resource-based violence—has systematically undermined food systems. The analysis details how conflict disrupts agricultural production, destroys assets, impedes market access, triggers mass displacement, degrades essential health and sanitation services, and fosters chronic instability. It also highlights the disproportionate suffering of rural communities, pastoralists, farmers, women, children, and the elderly. The opinion piece argues that armed conflict is a primary driver of the region’s profound food insecurity, impacting both caloric sufficiency and nutritional balance. The piece concludes by emphasizing the urgent need for integrated, context-specific responses that address peace and food security needs concurrently.
