This book has its conceptual origin from the lecture materials of the training courses taught by one of the authors in the early nineties. It was during this period that in several developing nations, particularly in Africa, even when the signs of widespread hunger and abject poverty were visible, policy makers did not act for want of ‘empirical evidence’. Some policy makers even dismissed the severity of the problem saying that the hunger reports prepared by government officials were not rigorous enough to take them seriously. Some decision makers entirely rejected the reports prepared by the officials, stating that the analysis of data was ‘not statistically sound’ to.
