Africa has a fresh opportunity to emerge from poverty and hunger, environmental degradation, unemployment, and poor public health. The United Nations, the United States, and other key donors have recently committed to renewed assistance efforts for the beleaguered continent.

There is widespread agreement on the primary goal: rapid and pro-poor rural economic growth. To achieve this goal, however, requires a comprehensive, forward-looking strategy based on solid data, thorough analysis, and careful follow-up. So far, national development strategies in Africa have been spotty at best, suffering from weak data, inadequate analytical tools, and a narrow focus on isolated issues. Planning is generally a one-shot exercise: Few systems exist to evaluate and monitor progress, success, or failure.

Africa needs a new way of doing business. Supported by a U.S. presidential initiative to end hunger on the continent, IFPRI is taking the lead in developing and deploying a comprehensive and flexible policy-planning support system. Designed to create a fine-grained picture of rural communities and regions, the Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System (SAKSS) unifies a number of powerful tools for data collection and spatial and economic analysis—and just as importantly, for post-planning monitoring and evaluation. Working with several research partners, IFPRI has already developed many of the analytical tools that SAKSS requires—for instance, the widely used DREAM model for assessing agricultural investment priorities. Having used SAKSS successfully at the regional level in Africa, IFPRI’s researchers are now testing it at the country level in Uganda.

The goal is to institutionalize SAKSS within relevant policymaking institutions for each of three subregions in Africa (East, Southern, and West) and within selected countries. To that end, SAKSS partners plan to remain in each of the regions and selected countries for at least five years to build up and institutionalize the system and train researchers and policy analysts. Making this significant investment now promises to permanently improve the lives of millions of poor African people.