Aiming to strengthen the current Market Information System (MIS) in South Sudan, the Food and Agriculture Organization recently completed training for 120 new specialists in the country.

The training on market price data collection was undertaken as part of efforts to build the capacity of national institutions to collect, analyze and use information about food, agriculture and markets.

It was done in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture, Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWSNET) and the National Bureau of Statistics.

A press release issued by FAO on 19 November noted that as a result of the training, 120 new Market Information Specialists were now contributing to the data flow throughout the country, up to county level.

The news release explained that an MIS is crucial to enable inclusive, efficient and resilient agriculture and food systems.

“It is an important tool to understand the functioning of markets and monitor market prices to gauge their impact on household food access, and creates a transparent platform for easy access to data,” the statement said.

It added that the system lays the foundation for informed decision-making and policy development.

“The challenge is that very few have invested the time and money to develop such systems in a volatile environment like South Sudan,”  said FAO Economist Kennedy Nanga. “The MIS system is now being built from the ground up and integrated within the existing institutions. We looked at what the most important and useful information is to gather for analysis and have built a system for it.”

The statement added that to create an effective system, FAO was pioneering the use of an SMS application for the registration of prices, price data analysis and interpretation, hoping that this will allow specialists in hard-to-reach, remote areas to transmit timely and valuable data from the markets.

“We are very excited about this new SMS application as it is more efficient, allowing me to report on time,” said Henry Acidri, a new Market Information Specialist. “Before, I was doing everything manually but would face challenges in the field such as printing when there is no fuel for the generator. Also, now the information goes straight into the system, so people can see the price of maize right away, for example.”