Projects

Partnerships for scaling out climate-smart agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa

Current
Photo: Neil Palmer (CIAT)

Project description

This project formalizes new partnerships between CCAFS and development partners throughout Sub-Saharan Africa including but not limited to the African Union New Partnership for Africa's Development (AU-NEPAD), Alliance for CSA in Africa (ACSAA), Regional Economic Communities, FAO and national governments.

Through the co-development and application of analytically rigorous information, models and tools, these partnerships support the up and out scaling of a climate-smart agriculture (CSA) approach for programs ranging from sub-national to continental levels. This initiative helps partners to use science-based approaches as they make decisions with regard to CSA programing.

The project extends other ongoing CCAFS and Centre activities—such as the CSA Compendium, CSA Prioritization Framework and Climate Wizard—to include advanced analytical approaches and co-learning partnerships with major development actors in sub-Saharan Africa to support the emerging CSA agenda. The data, tools, and lessons learned from this project will be built into an open source platform that stands to become the clearinghouse for CSA decision-support.

Key activities include:

  • Developing baseline and foresight information on situation analysis, risks and vulnerabilities, targets for action, and CSA efficiency and effectiveness.
  • Targeting and Prioritizing interventions to improve development programming and policies.
  • Evaluating and optimizing participatory processes for co-developing next-users’ specific CSA project and investment portfolios.
  • Carrying out capacity development and training.

By 2019 as a result of the project, we expect that eleven entities (5 International, 3 in West Africa, and 3 in East Africa) will have used the information, approaches, and tools developed here to guide their CSA-related programming or policies/policy implementation.

Those entities include: AU-NEPAD; International NGOs including Oxfam, World Vision, CARE, Catholic Relief Services, Concern Worldwide; Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS); Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA); regional and national NGOs; and various government department and ministries.

This research is carried out in at least 20 African countries, including Ethiopia, Malawi, Niger, Zambia, Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and Namibia.

Outputs

24 Kenya county climate risk profiles which have contributed to the development of the US$ 250M Kenya CSA project.

Evidence- and risk-based planning for food security under climate change

  • Africa CSA Baseline Targets Update and Assessment.
  • Participatory workshops to co-develop and pilot prioritization tools, and create  investment portfolios.
  • Practical guidelines for implementing CSA and CAWT.
  • Evidence- and political-based definition on the African Perspective on CSA.
  • Research papers and Policy brief co-written with ACSAA.
  • Website, Training curriculum, materials.

 

Partners

The project team includes World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), Oxfam, World Vision, CARE, CRS, Concern Worldwide, World Bank, IFAD, Global Alliance for Climate Smart Agriculture, COMESA, Southern African Development Community (SADC), East African Community (EAC), ECOWAS, AU-NEPAD, ACSAA, UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA).

Gender

Gender is integrated throughout this project, in data collection, analysis and training, in order to support increasing women’s participation in CSA scaling and implementation activities.

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Further information

For further information, please contact the Project Leader, Todd Rosenstock (ICRAF) at t.rosenstock@cgiar.org.