Predicting Food-Security Crises in the Horn of Africa Using Machine Learning

In this study, we present a machine-learning model capable of predicting food insecurity in the Horn of Africa, which is one of the most vulnerable regions worldwide. The region has frequently been affected by severe droughts and food crises over the last several decades, which will likely increase in future. Therefore, exploring novel methods of increasing early warning capabilities is of vital importance to reducing food-insecurity risk. We present a XGBoost machine-learning model to predict food-security crises up to 12 months in advance. We used >20 data sets and the FEWS IPC current-situation estimates to train the machine-learning model. Food-security dynamics were captured effectively by the model up to 3 months in advance (R-2 > 0.6). Specifically, we predicted 20% of crisis onsets in pastoral regions (n = 96) and 20%-50% of crisis onsets in agro-pastoral regions (n = 22) with a 3-month lead time. We also compared our 8-month model predictions to the 8-month food-security outlooks produced by FEWS NET. Over a relatively short test period (2019-2022), results suggest the performance of our predictions is similar to FEWS NET for agro-pastoral and pastoral regions. However, our model is clearly less skilled in predicting food security for crop-farming regions than FEWS NET. With the well-established FEWS NET outlooks as a basis, this study highlights the potential for integrating machine-learning methods into operational systems like FEWS NET.