To be climate-smart is to be inclusive
Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA)
Africa’s climate-smart future, driven by innovation for smallholder farmers
It’s crucial that women, youth and other vulnerable social groups are included in the process of scaling climate-smart agriculture in Africa. Women and youth are powerful community changemakers, and without their participation, input and influence, we won't succeed in truly transforming food systems on the continent.
Mainstreaming gender-smart investments, training women in new agricultural and forecasting technologies, and using socially-inclusive approaches to disseminating climate-smart tools and services are great opportunities to increase resilience and promote equality.
In our round-up of stories this month, we're highlighting AICCRA activities that center gender and inclusion - including an all-women podcast episode, a new knowledge-sharing webinar series, and key learnings from AICCRA's implementation of the World Bank's Environmental and Social Framework.
What we're listening to this month
On International Women's Day, we released a new Climate Smart Africa podcast episode that explores how AICCRA teams and partners are supporting women across Africa to embrace climate information services and climate-smart agriculture for a more resilient future.?
Engaging women to increase their access to information and technology is a key theme of AICCRA's activities and in this podcast you'll hear about how we're doing that through training women in the use of Next-Gen forecasting systems, community engagements in Ghana, and more.
?? Listen here.
The episode is hosted by Mina Okuru Addico, MCIPR with guests AICCRA's Gender and Social Inclusion Lead Sophia Huyer, International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) 's Renee Bullock, AICCRA Ghana Social Inclusion Expert Faustina Obeng Adomaa and International Research Institute for Climate and Society, Columbia Climate School 's Amanda Grossi. ?
Investing in climate-smart entrepreneurs in Senegal - winners announced!
Launched in September 2022, the Gender Smart Accelerator Challenge is an investment pipeline building effort initiated by AICCRA Senegal and implemented by the WIC Academy, with the support of the CGIAR Sustainable Finance Team (OneSF) and the CGIAR Climate Change Resilience Initiative (ClimBeR).
In February, the entrepreneurs of the Gender-Smart Accelerator Challenge were able to present their projects to a jury made up of investors and stakeholders in the Senegalese financial ecosystem. At the end of the competition, six agri-businesses were awarded grant amounts ranging from 6 to 15 million CFA (USD 10,000-25,000).
New in 2023: Gender and Social Inclusion Webinar Series
Over the course of AICCRA's implementation, our Gender and Social Inclusion teams have worked to identify some of the key barriers and opportunities facing women farmers, especially in the context of climate change.
To share our learnings and experiences more broadly, AICCRA is hosting a series of discussion-based webinars throughout the year. These interactive sessions are designed to dive deeper into and share learnings from AICCRA's inclusion activities across our focus countries.
The next webinar in the series is Engendering capacity development: Reflections from AICCRA Zambia on Tuesday 28 March, 13:00 (GMT).
Moving beyond frameworks to practice
Through AICCRA, CGIAR and partners have put 世界银行 's Environmental and Social Framework (ESF) into practice for the very first time.
With over 22 public and private sector institutions playing a role, how the ESF is implemented in practice is a central issue for the project’s own measure of its success.?
Despite initial challenges, there are positive outcomes and constructive lessons to be shared from the AICCRA experience, including with implementing partners in-country.
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“Persons with disabilities have never been on our radar, we have never thought of including them in our extension services and neither have we tracked them in our global indicators on farmers reached… this could be a novelty, we will look out for them in our operational locations and ensure their inclusion in our operations and indicator count.”?Sylvester Kalonge, Country Director, iDE Zambia .
This blog by AICCRA's Senior Environmental and Social Safeguards Specialist, Adams Kwaw, reflects on our learnings so far, sharing lessons in implementing the ESF in a large, complex project across 6 countries and regional initiatives.?
Training future leaders in agriculture and climate research
Evidence suggests women made up only 25% of agricultural scientists in Africa in the last decade, and a much lower proportion of decision makers on agriculture and climate change at institutional, national & global levels. This situation has not critically improved in recent years.
In response, together with CORAF | West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development , AICCRA hosted a workshop designed to develop women’s leadership in agriculture and climate research, and to promote their access to decision-making positions in regional, and national research, extension, and advisory organizations.
Highlighting the role of gender in pastoral and dryland innovations
Research evidence in this article by International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) shows that gender-responsive approaches for climate change adaptation in pastoral and dryland areas will help women to continue building independent and resilient livelihoods.
AICCRA is scaling climate information services and climate-smart agriculture and?increasing women’s uptake and adoption of drought-tolerant crops?in lower eastern counties by using socially-inclusive approaches.
Event: Is African agriculture adapting to climate change fast enough?
AICCRA has developed compelling analysis of how adaptation tracking is organized and operationalized in national contexts across Africa.
Through a collaboration with several partners, AICCRA systematically assessed Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) and National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) of 53 African countries to improve the tracking of progress on adaptation investments and policies.
In March, we presented this research and an update from AICCRA's 2022 Annual Report to the World Bank.
Extra reading:
The AICCRA team is supported by a number of researchers and scientists who help plan and implement our activities. And we're committed to writing about and sharing key findings and learnings from AICCRA research and activities to help others with knowledge and insights as we work towards a climate-smart future for Africa.
Here's a few of AICCRA's published articles we've been reading lately:
Read all of these stories and more on our news page or follow us on social media (@CGIARAfrica) for ongoing updates.
Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA) is a project that helps deliver a climate-smart African future driven by science and innovation in agriculture. It is led by the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT and supported by a grant from the International Development Association (IDA) of the World Bank.