Geographic Boundaries
FEWS NET maintains current and historical national and subnational administrative boundaries for FEWS NET-monitored countries. These geospatial data resources identify the geographic boundaries of administrative divisions within a given country. FEWS NET monitors changes to administrative boundaries over time and uses these shapefiles to develop a variety of FEWS NET mapping products (i.e., acute food insecurity classification maps, livelihood zone maps, trade route activity, and market functioning maps).
FEWS NET maintains a database of current and historical sub-national administrative boundaries for FEWS NET-monitored countries. These files are available for download in a geographic information system (GIS) shapefile format.
The boundary files come from a variety of public sources, including the Food and Agriculture Organization's Global Administrative Unit Layers (FAO-GAUL), Database of Global Administrative Areas (GADM), the Humanitarian Data Exchange, and data files received from local and regional partners. Regardless of source, FEWS NET cleans all admin-boundary files to match a standard international boundary and to address any gap and overlap topology issues.
Each admin unit is assigned a unique alpha-numeric ID for FEWS NET reference, called an “FNID”. All data files include standardized English names and aliases. Standard French, Spanish, and Portuguese names are included in the files when one of these languages is an official language of the related country. FEWS NET uses standard names from the GEOnet Names Server database in shapefiles for countries and admin levels where names are available. In most cases, these spellings are also reviewed by national staff and adjusted based on local knowledge and standards.
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* The "Download all Administrative Boundaries Data" button at the top of this page includes current sub-national boundaries