February 2011: The UN Development Programme (UNDP), Regional Bureau for Africa, is inviting Sub-Saharan African researchers from different disciplines to submit paper proposals on the relationship between food security and human development in the region. The resulting papers will inform the first African Human Development Report.

Questions that the report aims to address include: the importance of information technologies in food security, in particular, the way mobile technology improves access to markets, credit and insurance markets, and knowledge sharing; the political economy of food insecurity in Africa: allocation of resources; distribution of services and empowerment; innovations in social protection to enhance food security, in particular the role of counter-cyclical and seasonal social programmes that protect households from food insecurity; the contribution, roles and enabling conditions for science and technology solutions to addressing hunger, malnutrition and human poverty in sub-Saharan Africa; impacts and implications of climate change for nutritional security in sub-Saharan Africa (including analysis of the links between climate change and nutritional disease prevalence and incidence); quantification of the linkages between critical natural resource scarcities and nutritional outcomes; and a dynamic analysis of agricultural productivity across the world.

Papers should examine one of the following general topics in sub-Saharan Africa: agricultural productivity and human development; food aid and human development; agricultural trade and human development; food markets and human development; nutrition and disease; water, soil, climate change and food security; the political economy of food security; and technology, research and development, and food security.

Paper proposals should be submitted by 28 February 2011 via e-mail to elisabetta.aurino@undp.org with the subject ‘Call for Research Proposals.’ Proposals should not exceed two pages and must include: title, abstract, objectives and relevance for the region, outline of research and timetable, and the fee required for the completion of the research paper, not to exceed US$10,000. In addition, proposals must be accompanied by a curriculum vitae of the main researcher. Proposals must be in English, French or Portuguese, as must the final papers. [Information on first Africa Human Development Report]