Stimulating Collective Action to Scale-up Climate Smart Agriculture (SCA) Practices in Africa

A well-attended back-to-back CSA and FS CSA workshop kicked off at the World Agroforestry Center in Nairobi, Kenya today 31st March 2014. The workshop is co-organized by the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), the NEPADPlanning and Coordinating Agency (NPCA), the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) and the International Center for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF). The workshop will run from the 31st March to 4th April 2014.
The purpose of the workshop is to stimulate collective action to leverage political (policy), technical and financing support to grass-root, national and regional-level programmes and initiatives to scale-up the adoption of climate smart agriculture (CSA) practices in defined farming systems in Africa. The workshop brings together over 60 experts from 15 countries, sub-regional, regional and international organizations working on climate change issues as they affect agriculture.

A statement delivered at the opening ceremony on behalf of the Executive Director of FARA, Dr. Yemi Akinbamijo noted that Climate Change is an important global externality that calls for a global collective action and that Africa is already experiencing the impacts of climate change that are expected to become more severe. In the coming years, many African countries are likely to experience more severe droughts and declines in water supply, which would further aggravate food shortages on the continent. The statement pointed out that from a research perspective, Climate Smart Agriculture as a solution, should be an integral part of Africa’s economic transformation process. It noted further that there is need to generate data and research outputs to support evidence-based policies that promote adoption of CSA practices; and that the increase in production expected from adoption of CSA should be driven by sound strategic analysis and foresight, enhanced CSA capacity building and an enabling policy environment for implementation of CSA initiatives.

Participants at the workshop are expected to discuss the relationship between evolving Climate Smart Agriculture and Africa’s economic transformation; discuss local political economy factors and drivers that promote or hinder the adoption of CSA practices; deliberate on the effectiveness of CSA policies and how they could be improved through evidence-based policy design; examine successful CSA initiatives, reasons for success, lessons learned and options on how they can be up- and out-scaled. Participants are also expected to develop a framework for a common African-aligned application of CSA as well as agree on a set of guidelines to identify and measure the implementation of CSA in Africa.

Before closing his statement, the Executive Director expressed FARA’s appreciation to the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation for funding the project on Research to Support Accelerated Scaling of Climate Smart Agriculturethat FARA and its partners are currently implementing.

CUTTING FOOD WASTE TO INCREASE FOOD SECURITY

Accra — Experts say food waste accounts for 1.3 billion tonnes every year. 

At a time when food security the world and indeed Africa is recovering from food crises, experiencing high population growth rate and struggling to increase productivity, it is pertinent to cut food waste. Experts recommend checking food expiry dates and cooking just enough to eat among several other techniques. "With the World Bank warning of the possibility of a four-degrees-centigrade temperature rise by the end of the decade and an expected world population of nine billion by 2050, global food production and supply is going to be highly affected," Dennis Garrity, United Nations drylands ambassador and senior fellow at the World Agroforestry Centre told AlertNet in Nairobi. "The time to act is now."

Experts estimate that there are about 870 million hungry people in the world today, a bulk of these people are in sub-Saharan Africa, but droughts, floods and climate related plant diseases among many other factors, continually reduce access to food especially in rural areas. Experts believe that cutting the amount of food that go to waste in developed and developing countries is key to addressing this. 

A Typical Food Dump

THE SCENE AT DANDORA DUMP

One of Africa's food waste hotspots is the Dandora rubbish dump on the outskirts of Nairobi.The 30-acre piece of land receives 2,000 tonnes of solid waste every day, an uncertain share of it food waste. The presence of pigs, marabou storks, dogs and other animals - as well as human scavengers - indicates there is plenty to eat, however. "I have worked on this site for the past six years," said Eunice Khasandi, a 36-year-old mother of four who scavenges waste food at the dump.

"We collect food and sell it to pig farmers on the outskirts of the city," said Khasandi who is one of an estimated 6,000 scavengers, who visit the dump, according to the City Council of Nairobi

The scavengers sell a 50-kilogramme sack of waste food for Sh200 ($2.50). If the sack contained an equivalent amount of maize meal, Kenya's staple food, it would be enough to feed between 250 and 350 people if served with stew for lunch, nutrition experts say.

Read the original of this report on AlertNet Climate, the Thomson Reuters Foundation's daily news website on the human impacts of climate change.