Countries and Country Groups

The FEWS NET Data Warehouse (FDW) captures a range of country-specific details, including the country’s geography and nomenclature. Countries are also organized into country groups for internal use as well as to support data extracts and Visualizations. This page provides an overview of the country and country group fields referenced most often by FEWS NET staff.

Countries

Country names

FDW stores country names from the following external standards bodies:

• International Standard for Organization (ISO)

• U.S. Board of Geographic Names (BGN)

• UK Permanent Committee on Geographical Names (PCGN)

As country names from these bodies are externally determined, they should almost never be changed by members of the FEWS NET project.

The default displayed country name in data extracts and Visualizations is stored as the BGN Proper Name.

There may be cases when an override to BGN Proper Name is needed to display a different name in FEWS NET’s data extracts or Visualizations. In this case, the override name should be entered in the Preferred Name field.

FDW can also store preferred names in French, Spanish, and Portuguese.

Country flag

FDW stores PNGs of country flags for the countries FEWS NET reports on in the Country Flag field. These PNGs are used for the FEWS NET website’s country pages.

Country groups

Country groups are used to create geographic groupings and support additional categorizations. A list of country group codes can be pulled from the FEWS NET API.

Each country in FDW is assigned country groups as maintained by the United Nations (UN), including:

• A UN M.49 Geographic Group with the sub-region name.

• Country groups that indicate if the country is designated as a Least Developed Country, Land Locked Developing Country, or Small Island Developing State.

Countries that FEWS NET reports on are also assigned a FEWS NET Region that reflects the country group name used for FEWS NET’s data extracts and Visualizations.

To extend the UN M.49 codes, FEWS NET uses 900-level numbers for FEWS NET specific regions. For example, Afghanistan is assigned to the Asia country group with the code 905.

FEWS NET’s primary geographic groups are shown in the table below.