The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has been on the front line of resilience measurement since 2008. Together with other key partners, FAO has been pioneering resilience measurement and analysis with respect to food insecurity through the Resilience Index Measurement and Analysis (RIMA) (FAO, 2015) model. This model has been employed to undertake this analysis of Sudan. RIMA identifies and weighs six pillars of resilience and relating factors that contribute to making households resilient to shocks that affect their food security. It also allows for tracing the stability of these factors over time. The pillars that constitute the RIMA model are: Income and Food Access (IFA), Access to Basic Services (ABS), Assets (AST), Social Safety Nets (SSN), Sensitivity (S) and Adaptive Capacity (AC). RIMA provides evidence in favour of designing, delivering, monitoring and evaluating assistance for populations in need, in a more effective way based on what they need most. This household resilience analysis of Sudan is based on the National Baseline Household Survey 2009 (NBHS 2009), developed and implemented by the Government of Sudan from May to June 2009.

At the time that that survey was designed and carried out, South Sudan had not yet gained independence as a sovereign nation. Thus, the survey was originally intended to collect data from across the regions that are currently officially referred to as the nations of Sudan and South Sudan. However, ongoing conflicts in the regions that now comprise South Sudan meant that no data was collected there during the survey. Given this, and that South Sudan gained independence in 2011 after the NBHS 2009 had concluded, this resilience analysis refers only to present-day Sudan, and does not include any analysis for South Sudan. This household resilience analysis examines differences in resilience capacity and resilience structure between female- and male-headed households, and between regions. This analysis can be adopted as a baseline to critically review the different policies implemented by the Government of Sudan, in order to suggest targeted policy improvements.