This report documents the analysis of the Recurrent Monitoring Survey (RMS) 20I8-19 data set collected as part of the impact evaluation of the Resilience in the Sahel Enhanced (RISE) initiative. The overarching goal of the RISE program is to increase the resilience to shocks of chronically vulnerable populations in agro-pastoral and marginal agriculture livelihood zones of the Sahel. The five-year program is being implemented in targeted zones of Burkina Faso and Niger in West Africa.

The purpose of an RMS is to collect real-time data during a period of shock in order to understand the nature and evolution of shocks, how they affected households’ well-being, how households coped with them, and what helped them recover. RMS 2018-19 was launched in response to signs that shock exposure was escalating in the RISE program area in its fourth year of operation. Quantitative data were collected from a representative, panel sample of 828 households over five rounds two months apart starting in August 2018 and ending in April 2019, a nine-month period. Qualitative data were concurrently collected in each round employing focus group discussions and key informant interviews. RMS 2018-19 follows on baseline (April 2015) and midline (April 2017) surveys and proceeds an endline survey to be conducted in 2020.

The objectives of this report are to (1) understand the severity and evolution of the shocks households faced over the RMS period; (2) document the coping strategies they used to deal with them; (3) assess how resilient they were to the shocks; and (4) explore how households’ resilience capacities and the RISE program to date have affected their resilience. While resilience itself is an ability to manage or recover from shocks, resilience capacities are a set of conditions, attributes, or skills that enable households to achieve resilience.