Anticipatory Action in Advance of 'Wicked Crises' - Insights from a real-time study of people’s lives in Somalia 2020–2022

This recent study from SPARC offers insights from a real-time study of people’s lives in Somalia during 2020–2022, looking at how crisis-affected people take their own anticipatory action.

In 2020, a SPARC research programme used the advance warnings of a possible drought in Somalia to set up a panel of farmers and pastoralists to analyse how crisis-affected people take their own anticipatory action. The outcomes of this study offer a way of understanding how support can best be offered as crises threaten, and what are the windows of opportunity for doing so.

This report looks at the timing of the humanitarian sector's strategies, and at the rationale behind people’s anticipatory strategies earlier in the crisis trajectory in three sites in Somalia: Somaliland, Puntland and the Middle Shabelle Region in the south. It is not an analysis of any anticipatory projects implemented in the country. Key findings zoom in on the challenges of viable anticipatory action; the lack of alternative strategies within the local economy; integration of reliable seasonal weather forecasting into planning; and the need for a wide variety of strategies or programming, anticipatory action instruments and funding mechanisms.