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IFPRI ForumTimely and comprehensive data on poor and rural areas can be a powerful tool in any developing country's fight against hunger and poverty. Because poverty is spatially defined in many countries, however, maps that illustrate the many determinants of poverty can be particularly useful for devising improved policies and investment strategies.
In Ethiopia, there was no widely available set of maps on the agricultural and rural economy, so IFPRI and its Ethiopia Strategy Support Program have produced the Atlas of the Ethiopian Rural Economy in collaboration with Ethiopia's Central Statistical Agency and the Ethiopian Development Research Institute to provide policymakers and development practitioners with a detailed view of how farmers and herders in Ethiopia attain their livelihoods.
"Many development issues are spatial," says Jordan Chamberlin, a scientist with IFPRI's Development Strategy and Governance Division in Addis Ababa, "though recognition of this fact may not always be reflected in a country's development discussions. Simply moving from tabular to cartographic representations of statistical data is one small but powerful step in promoting that understanding."
Through a series of maps and explanatory texts in both Amharic and English, the atlas provides a comprehensive view of rural Ethiopia in the areas of production, infrastructure, markets, natural resources, agroclimate, social indicators, institutions, and demographics. By giving a full and multilayered picture of conditions in rural Ethiopia, these maps can help target interventions to the people and communities who need them most.