About the Sahel Predictive Analytics (Sahel PA) project

The Sahel PA project doubles down on the special challenges facing the Sahel across the triple nexus of humanitarian aid, peace-building and development with the aim of guiding decision-makers by anticipating and quickly identifying where multiple risks overlap to allow for better preparedness and to support context analysis, planning, training, and capacity-building, while also outlining where additional data is needed. 
The initiative is funded by the German Federal Foreign Office and facilitated by UNHCR in support of the office of the UN Special Coordinator for Development in the Sahel. It was initiated by the High-Level Committee on Programmes (HLCP) and subsequently the Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB) as the first whole-of-UN system approach that combines machine learning, predictive modelling, and strategic foresight to identify risk hotspots in the Sahel. 
  • Host institution: Uppsala University
  • Project duration: 2020-2022
  • Project members: Håvard Hegre, Paola Vesco, Angelica Lindqvist-McGowan, Remco Jansen, Malika Rakhmankulova, Forogh Akbari
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Members of the research consortium

Adelphi, the Climate Hazards Center (CHC) at University of California Santa Barbara, the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB), the Center for International Earth Science Information Network at Columbia University (CIESIN), Colorado State University (CSU), Institute for Demographic Research (CIDR) at the City University of New York (CUNY), Danish Refugee Council (DRC), German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM), Institut de Formation et de Recherche Démographiques (IFORD), Initiative Prospective Agricole et Rurale (IPAR), Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), the Prediction-Visualisation-Early Warning team (PREVIEW) at the German Federal Foreign Office (FFO), United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), United Nations University Centre for Policy Research (UNU-CPR), University of Kassel, the Violence Early-Warning System (ViEWS) project at Uppsala University, Walker Institute at the University of Reading, and the West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adaptive Land Use (WASCAL).