Real-Time Hunger Surveillance Across Rural Zambia

Household-level intelligence that delivers early warning signals for emerging food and nutrition crises.

WHAT WE DO

Meal Watch provides high-frequency, household-level food security and nutrition intelligence across rural Zambia, supporting evidence-based decision-making for timely intervention.

Capacity Development

Community monitors are trained in standardized data collection, ensuring accurate, reliable, and contextually relevant reporting on household food consumption and nutrition indicators.

Systematic Household Surveillance

Weekly monitoring captures structured information on dietary intake, food access, and early signs of malnutrition.

Data-Driven Early Warning

Collected data is analyzed to produce risk maps, trend analyses, and early-warning signals, enabling rapid identification of emerging food and nutrition crises.

Verification and Quality Assurance

Multi-tiered validation—including supervisor oversight and community feedback—ensures the integrity and reliability of all reports.

Facilitating Early Response and Policy Advocacy

By providing actionable, evidence-based insights, Meal Watch supports partners in rapid operational response and informs policy and programmatic decisions addressing rural food insecurity.

Meal Watch bridges data, analysis, and action, empowering partners to detect, respond to, and prevent food and nutrition crises before they escalate.

WHY IT MATTERS

Rural food insecurity in Zambia is rapidly evolving and highly localized, yet traditional monitoring systems rely on infrequent national surveys that capture only aggregated trends. By the time these reports are released, emerging household-level crises may have already escalated. In 2023, over 36% of rural households experienced severe food insecurity, demonstrating the urgent need for high-frequency, actionable intelligence.

Meal Watch fills this critical gap by providing weekly, verified, household-level data on meals, dietary diversity, food access, and early nutrition stress. This data is rigorously validated through supervisor oversight and community feedback, ensuring accuracy and contextual relevance.

Our intelligence is translated into risk maps, trend analyses, and early-warning alerts, enabling partners to identify emerging crises, target interventions, and allocate resources effectively. Beyond immediate response, Meal Watch provides a framework to monitor progress toward SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) by 2030, assessing caloric sufficiency, nutritional adequacy, and equitable access at the household level.

By bridging data, analysis, and action, Meal Watch empowers partners to detect, respond to, and prevent food and nutrition crises before they escalate, ensuring that interventions are timely, precise, and impactful

Help Them

Communities monitored

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Households surveyed weekly

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Weekly Updates

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Verification

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Years Of Foundation

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METHODOLOGY

Our surveillance system follows a structured, multi-stage process:

Community recruitment and vetting
Standardized training protocols
Weekly household-level data collection
Data cleaning and consistency checks
Zone-level risk classification
Real-time alert generation
Weekly verification and community review

A Zambia where every household is food-secure, children thrive, and communities are empowered to achieve sustainable nutrition outcomes.

To deliver timely, actionable, community-driven intelligence on food security and nutrition, enabling authorities, NGOs, and partners to prevent hunger and malnutrition proactively.