Climate Smart Agriculture and Rural Transformation in Africa

 

What is the Africa Climate Smart Alliance?

I believe that in order for Africa to achieve its full potential in rural transformation, agriculture across the continent must undergo significant transformation to meet the challenges of climate change, food insecurity, malnutrition, poverty and environmental degradation.

The African Union [AU] Malabo Declaration on agricultural transformation is clear on the climate smart agriculture and the agriculture climate change nexus. Agriculture in Africa must show significant productivity improvements to meet the combined challenges of population growth and climate change. A proposed means of achieving such improvements is the increased use of a ‘climate smart agriculture’ approach to development and policy making, which emphasises the use of farming techniques that; increase yields; reduce vulnerability to climate change, and; reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  

 

Following the AU decision, the Africa Climate Smart Agriculture Alliance was formed to reach farmers through an alliance convened by the NEPAD Agency that includes all stakeholders and partners in Africa’s agriculture transformation agenda.  Its membership includes AU member states, regional economic communities, civil society groups, private sector, youth, women’s groups, researchers and academia as well as development partners, amongst others.  The Africa CSA Alliance supports the scaling-up of Climate-Smart Agriculture through its members in agricultural research and implementation.  It supports the goal of realising the uptake of CSA practices and approaches towards attaining the vision of supporting 25 million farm households to practice Climate Smart Agriculture by the year 2025.  

 

 

How best can women be assisted in climate smart agriculture by their governments? 

I always maintain that it is only smart for any government to invest in its female citizens.  Women in Africa contribute 80 percent to the food that is put on the table.  It therefore only makes sense to have policies that enable governments to invest in women, support their economic empowerment as well as their political participation.  Such policies could include enabling women, especially in rural and peri-urban areas, to form associations since there is power in numbers, especially when women come together.  Moreover, when women come together in groups and networks, it is easier for them to access resources, receive training and improve their capacity, as well as have their voices heard.  We need to see more women given the space to speak up on climate change and how it affects their agricultural productivity. 

 

 

Why do you think indigenous knowledge is important for climate smart agriculture?

We have a tendency look to the outside for solutions, while overlooking what we already have and not documenting or replicating our own good practices that have been developed over generations.  What is more, not everything that is flagged as innovative is new to Africa.  For instance, I recently came across an ‘innovation’ of using ridges in order to capture water.  To me this is nothing new as my own grandmother used that method.  This shows that these and other practices on the continent need to be documented, promoted and replicated. 

 

We should not adopt a position that makes it look as if our farmers lack knowledge.  While I was in Limbe, Cameroon, it was interesting to listen to smallholder farmers describe climate change in their own words and outline their coping strategies.  We therefore need to engage communities more as they have knowledge that will inform policymakers’ decisions, which will in turn help them to cope better in sustainably increasing their yields.

 

 

What are the linkages among the different NEPAD platforms, such as Women in Agribusiness, Rural Futures and the Africa Climate Smart Agriculture Alliance? 

The premise is that the continent will not develop if we leave the rural space behind.  An integrated approach is needed through which climate change as a nexus cuts across the spectrum of agribusiness, rural development and sustainable agriculture.  Therefore climate smart agriculture is at the heart of rural transformation as the economic mainstay, in which women have a central role.  The NEPAD Agency plays a critical role in bringing stakeholders together in these platforms to showcase and exchange knowledge and information on good practices and innovations that can be up-scaled across Africa.