IGAD Livestock Policy Initiative Accessibility Mapping in the Horn of Africa: Applications for Livestock Policy

PREFACE This is the 11 th of a series of working papers prepared for the Intergovernmental Authority on Development Livestock Policy Initiative (IGAD LPI). The IGAD LPI was established by IGAD in collaboration with FAO and with financial support from the European Commission. Its main objective is to enhance the contribution of the livestock sector to sustainable food security and poverty reduction in the IGAD region. The initiative works towards the core outputs of IGAD's programmes on policy harmonization, agriculture and the environment and regionally integrated information systems. The work described in this paper contributes towards making available standardised spatial data to help analyse policy options, to target policy interventions and to evaluate their impact – contributing to the evidence base underpinning pro-poor livestock policies. The objective of the paper is to review and investigate different approaches to accessibility mapping that are relevant to pro-poor livestock policy development. Access to services and markets are important contributors to poverty, as better access can lead to more efficient agricultural production, better market opportunities, diversification of rural economies and improvement of living conditions. Quantitative measures of accessibility are therefore useful in livestock policy analysis to determine optimal provision of services and to help understand the spatial distribution of markets and market access-and thus to target interventions. In this paper we describe the data and methodology required to estimate access to markets in the IGAD region (Section 3), then we discuss different measures of accessibility based on varying modes of transportation, different targets and the movement of different livestock products (Section 4). The annex provides step-by-step commands to produce the surfaces using standard ESRI GIS software. Disclaimer The designations employed and the presentation of material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or its authorities or concerning the delimitations of its frontiers or boundaries. The opinions expressed are solely those of the authors, and do not constitute in any way the official position of the FAO. Authors Francesca Pozzi conducted this work as a consultant to the IGAD LPI. Her research interests focus on the use of GIS, remote sensing and statistical tools to analyze poverty distribution and the linkages between poverty and livestock, agriculture, population distribution and the environment. Timothy Robinson works for the …