Jameel Index unveiled at the World Food Prize conference, assessing countries’ food trade vulnerability

• ‍The Jameel Index measures over 160 countries’ exposure to global food security vulnerability, dependence on global trade and regional threats impacting the trade in food goods.
• The framework is hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab for the Food and Climate Systems Transformation Alliance.
• Major food importing countries with low exports and countries with few trading partners are highly vulnerable, according to the index.

The Jameel Index for Food Trade and Vulnerability, a new framework for assessing countries’ exposure to shocks in the global food trade, took centre stage today at the 2024 World Food Prize annual conference in Des Moines, Iowa.

Launched in 2022, the Jameel Index has been developed by a team led by researchers at the Abdul Latif Jameel Water and Food Systems Lab (J-WAFS) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in collaboration with the Food and Climate Systems Transformation (FACT) Alliance, a J-WAFS-led global research consortium of more than 20 institutions worldwide.

Dr Greg Sixt and Professor Kenneth Strzepek, co-leads of the project, presented the framework and a preliminary version of the index, while leading a breakout session panel at the Norman E. Borlaug International Dialogue, the prestigious conference held annually around the presentation of the World Food Prize.

From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe: Analysing threats to food imports in a changing world

For many people, food security is directly linked to global trade and food imports. When the global food trade is disrupted—by conflict, climate change or other shocks—the effect on a country’s access to food can be catastrophic.

To help policymakers navigate these risks, the team from J-WAFS and FACT Alliance built a complex framework of global food trade based on a variety of metrics that constitute the Jameel Index. The platform presents vulnerability scores for these key food security metrics for over 160 countries.

Compelling findings are emerging from the index, which is in a beta version that, at present, only draws on current and historical data. Over the coming year, the team will augment the model to incorporate global change scenarios to assess future vulnerabilities, including the effects of climate change.

The Jameel Index considers a range of indicators, including dependency on food and animal feed imports and the concentration risk of trading with only a small number of partners.

Major food importing countries, like Algeria and Botswana, and small island states, like Cabo Verde, are highly vulnerable, according to the index. By contrast, major food exporting countries, like Argentina and the United States, are most resilient to shocks in global food trade.

Informing how countries strengthen food security

The Jameel Index was designed with policymakers in mind as a key group of users.  On the sidelines of the 79th United Nations General Assembly in New York in September, Dr Sixt presented the Jameel Index and its underlying model to an audience of policymakers, climate leaders, and researchers, including Eva Granados Galiano, the Spanish secretary of state for international cooperation, at an event convened by Community Jameel and partners.

Professor Kenneth Strzepek, co-lead of the Jameel Index, said: “The type of insights that are coming out of the Jameel index are valuable and impactful at many scales, and will grow even more as we disseminate the historical results. We further expect it to meet an extremely important gap with the release of the climate change results in mid 2025.”

A collaborative endeavour

In developing the Jameel Index, the J-WAFS team collaborated with FACT Alliance researchers from the Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research, the International Food Policy Research Institute and the Martin School at the University of Oxford, and scientists at United Arab Emirates University (which is not a FACT Alliance member). The project is supported by Community Jameel.

Joining Dr Sixt and Professor Strzepek on the panel at the Borlaug dialogue today were three of their collaborators: Linus Mofor, senior environmental affairs officer at the African Climate Policy Centre, Paola de Almeida, food and agriculture portfolio head at Pegasus Capital Advisors, and Shijie Yang, agricultural economist at the World Bank.

Nader Iskandar Diab, head of programmes at Community Jameel, said: “Equipping policymakers with the necessary information to implement more impactful policies is central to our mission at Community Jameel. We are very pleased to have supported the development of the Jameel Index for Food Trade and Vulnerability, which will allow policymakers to navigate any challenges to food security their respective countries may face and plan appropriately for the future.”

The Jameel Index is accessible online at jameelindex.mit.edu.