Résumé
The study "Insecurity in the Central Sahel" had a dual purpose: 1. To assess national public policies aimed at combating food and nutritional insecurity and to reconstruct the evolution of crisis management systems; 2. To characterize national situations of vulnerability to food and nutritional insecurity and examine the different expressions of the food and nutrition crises experienced since 2004. The study advocates for a resolutely constructivist and critical approach, as opposed to a lin-ear, descriptive, or even combinatory reading of operational actions. This approach seeks to move away from simplified causal analyses of the crises and generic interprÉtations. Instead, it emphasizes the specificities of the situations and highlights the important role of contextual factors in tailoring responses that are more effective. The study also considers the significant political dimension of the food issue (in the broadest sense), particularly in the context of crises, going beyond diagnostic, alert, and hierarchical systems for crisis measurement (such as the Harmonized Framework and the IFSPC scale). This growing politicization reflects a broader trend: it stems from the contradictory sharing of infor-mation, reinforced by media coverage of the commitments and responsibilities of involved actors, and is further coopted by military regimes or breakaway governments. It is also evident in the strong centralization of crisis management systems, which strategically interface with all technical and financial partners. Given this, it is not surprising that the study places the concept of governance of risks and crises at the forefront, rather than merely focusing on their parametric management. The report is structured in several stages: 1/ an introduction to the situation in the Central Sahel from a "risk/crisis" perspective; 2/ a comprehensive framework on the nature of a food crisis, introducing an original typology to understand emerging crisis variants; 3/ a contextualization of certain structural and conjectural factors contributing to vulnerability to food and nutritional insecurity; 4/ a characterization of four major crisis episodes for each country studied (2004-2005, 2007-2008, 2011-2012, and 2020-2022); 5/ an analysis of the response systems during each period, evaluating the efforts to reconfigure them; 6/ proposals for a situated analysis of future crises, focusing on knowledge for action and the dynamics of actors and institutions, to build policies based on negotiated compromises and non-routinized arrangements. The coordination team mobilized various information sources: 1/ scientific articles to ground the reflections in the thematic field; 2/ technical reports from state, parastatal, and humanitarian institutions directly involved in crisis prevention and management; 3/ raw data from interna-tional, stable databases, allowing for the construction of longitudinal data series; 4/ experien-tial knowledge accumulated by experts during field missions in each of the involved countries. Assessing public policies to combat food and nutritional insecurity is challenging, given the vastness of the data to compile, the volume of redundant documents to review, and the short time frame allocated for the study (September–December 2024). Nevertheless, it is important to note the clear intention of the institutions involved to seek greater operational effectiveness and efficiency. Despite significant vulnerability factors and some institutional dysfunctions, each country shares a performance-oriented ambition.