The value of strong coordination: Mauritania secures anticipatory funding for drought

The value of strong coordination: Mauritania secures anticipatory funding for drought

Drought is a recurrent and predictable shock in Mauritania. Seasonal rainfall variability, combined with structural vulnerabilities – including high unemployment, limited access to basic services and weak market infrastructure – and a reliance on rainfed agriculture and pastoral livelihoods, regularly cause significant humanitarian consequences. For example, these factors affect communities’ food insecurity, nutrition and livelihoods, forcing them to adopt negative coping strategies.

Currently, more than 500,000 people in Mauritania are projected to face food insecurity and malnutrition during the upcoming lean season, with a peak expected between June and August. The country has taken an important step towards supporting those at risk by developing and validating a nationally led, interagency anticipatory action framework for drought, which is supported by 2.5 million US dollars in anticipatory funding from the UN's Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF).

Drought as a predictable and manageable risk

Of all the hazards affecting Mauritania, drought is one of the most well understood. Importantly, the impacts of a drought do not occur overnight; they unfold over months, offering a critical window for forecast-based anticipatory action. Practitioners can use this window to protect people’s lives and livelihoods before the worst impacts materialize. This requires them to align early warning data with agreed thresholds, and to deliver pre‑planned actions that can be implemented quickly, and at scale, once the trigger thresholds are reached.

The framework for drought sets out a series of anticipatory actions, including cash assistance to protect food consumption and livelihoods, the distribution of agricultural inputs and livestock support, water supply and rehabilitation activities, nutrition prevention and treatment measures, as well as community engagement through early warnings and awareness campaigns.

This process was guided by strong national leadership, led by the National Food Security Commission (Dispositif National de Prévention et de Réponse aux Crises Alimentaires et Nutritionnelles/DCAN); the framework was then validated at the national level by the Food Security Commission (CSA).

This approach ensured that the framework aligns fully with national systems, priorities and existing governance structures for food security. It also embeds anticipatory action within Mauritania’s national coordination architecture for food security, reinforcing the principle that anticipatory action works best when anchored in national decision‑making structures. Furthermore, it supports ongoing efforts to position the DCAN as the government lead on anticipatory action, which was formalized through the signing of an official decree mid-May 2026.

Throughout the development of the framework, the UN's Resident Coordinator Office provided the necessary structure for good collaboration between partners. OCHA provided technical support through an inclusive and methodical approach, which helped translate complex risk information into an operational, decision‑ready product.

Unlocking funding for the framework

Following this national-level endorsement, the anticipatory action framework for drought was validated by the UN’s Emergency Relief Coordinator. This is significant, as it not only confirms the technical robustness of the framework, but also enables the rapid release of the pre‑arranged funding – 2.5 million US dollars from the CERF – when the trigger thresholds are met. This will allow partners to act earlier, faster and in a more coordinated way, thus reducing humanitarian needs, protecting livelihoods and improving the cost‑effectiveness of actions compared to response activities.

Why strong coordination matters

The validation of Mauritania’s interagency framework for drought demonstrates how strong coordination, national ownership and technical collaboration can translate risk analysis into robust systems to address humanitarian needs before they peak. Its development also highlighted several lessons relevant beyond the country context:

• National leadership is central: placing national authorities at the centre of the process strengthens the legitimacy of a framework and ensures it aligns with existing systems.
• Coordination unlocks scale: working on the basis of collaboration and inclusivity, developing an interagency framework reduces fragmentation and should lead to collective, complementary actions.
• Validation builds confidence: endorsement, both nationally and externally, creates trust among partners and donors.
• Financing follows preparedness: credible, well-designed frameworks can unlock predictable funding before a crisis escalates.

Looking ahead

As climate variability increases the frequency and severity of dry spells, in Mauritania and beyond, there is an increasingly urgent need to move from responding to crises to anticipating them. With this framework validated and funded, Mauritania’s focus is now on monitoring the lean season and, if the new framework is activated, in ensuring coordinated and complementary actions.

The next immediate phase will focus on operational readiness, ensuring that systems, partners and communities are prepared to act if the trigger thresholds are reached. Continuous learning will also be essential to refine the triggers, actions and coordination arrangements, based on experience. More broadly, this example demonstrates how anticipatory action can be embedded within national governance structures and translated into tangible outcomes that offer a pathway towards more timely, effective and dignified humanitarian action.