Partnerships are at the heart of AICCRA’s approach to scaling climate-smart agriculture and climate information services in Africa. By leveraging our combined knowledge, resources and reach, we can more effectively accelerate climate action across the continent. 

A total of 82 partners partner organizations increasingly accessed enhanced climate information services (CIS) and validated climate-smart agriculture (CSA) in 2023, building upon collaborations established in the core AICCRA countries with a growing number of ‘spillover’ outcomes. We also saw eight new partnerships established with universities who are mainstreaming CIS into their curricula.

Since its inception, AICCRA has played a pivotal role in convening robust and cross-sectoral partnerships among Africa’s universities, government ministries, national agricultural research, and extension services (NARES), non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and farmer associations. 

In 2023, these collaborations contributed to embedding climate curricula in Africa’s higher learning systems, disseminating climate information to farmers, establishing early warning systems, supporting innovation events and grant accelerator programs, and informing policy development and planning at national and continental levels.

For me, a particularly meaningful outcome is the dissemination of targeted agro-climate advisories to 471,000 Kenyan farmers through strengthened engagement with the Kenya Meteorological Department (KMD) and the Kenya Agriculture and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO). 60 percent of the farmers reached through this partnership were women.

Through AICCRA, 11 public and private sector organizations in Ghana mobilized to sign a memorandum of understanding to protect its food system from pest and disease threats. In Senegal, ongoing engagement with the Ministry of Agriculture, Rural Equipment and Food Sovereignty (MAERSA) led to the development of a Gender and Climate Action plan.

More than 264,000 farmers in Zambia were reached directly through our Accelerator partners. And in Ethiopia, 72,000 agricultural extension workers were trained on a new curriculum co-developed by AICCRA and partners.

At Africa Climate Summit and COP28, we hosted rich conversations with key regional partners to collaborate on a vision for the future of our partnerships in Africa, ensuring alignment at this crucial point in AICCRA’s journey. 

With the confirmation of additional financing from the World Bank, we’re energized to keep strengthening these partnerships, bringing together multi-sector stakeholders and key agricultural actors to build on a shared vision of a climate-smart and resilient Africa. 

Todd Crane

AICCRA Kenya Cluster Lead

Sharing knowledge is a foundation of AICCRA’s approach to scaling climate-smart agriculture (CSA) across Africa's agricultural ecosystem – from providing technical and scientific support to policy makers across scales, engaging in capacity and skills development for agricultural officers, to ensuring CSA technologies and practices are in the hands of farmers.

In 2023, 20,000 stakeholders participated in AICCRA capacity development activities, including trainings, learning workshops, stakeholder dialogues, and technical assistance. About 34 percent of these training participants were women.

The technical support and capacity building activities were supported and complimented by a strong scientific evidence base. The AICCRA teams produced a total of 36 peer-reviewed papers and 154 knowledge products through the year, contributing to the resource base on CSA and CIS for African decision makers in agriculture and climate action.

Notable papers include one on CSA technologies and determinants of farmers’ adoption decision in Ethiopia, and another on designing a participatory framework for prioritizing investments for CSA scaling in rice-based systems using the case study of Mali.

And a wide variety of knowledge products, decision support tools and advisory services were created or enhanced, often in collaboration with national and regional partners, particularly in West Africa where almost three-quarters of these tools were led by partners AGHRYMET, CORAF, RUFORUM, and WASCAL.

A highlight of 2023 was the development of a Climate Risk Management in Agriculture Extension (CRMAE) curriculum with 70 African institutions in a landmark example of ‘South-South’ learning across AICCRA’s six focus countries.

In East and Southern Africa, AICCRA contributed to three Greater Horn of Africa Climate Outlook Forums (GHACOF) working closely with ICPAC, and in Kenya developed activities designed to improve women’s access to digital information. AICCRA Senegal has been working with local actors to develop social media communications for climate information. In Ghana, we reached more than 240,000 farmers through radio programs and ‘listening clubs’ designed for women.

AICCRA teams have also been instrumental in ensuring that climate-smart technologies such as improved varieties of drought tolerant seeds, dual-purpose crops, bundled innovations including Small Ruminant Value Chain Transformation (SmaRT) packs, and affordable, natural solutions to pests and diseases are being introduced to and used by farmers. 

By sharing knowledge, CSA technologies, climate information and learning resources, we’re catalyzing and scaling climate action on the ground, moving from access to use, and ensuring that the impacts of AICCRA’s work will be realized far beyond the scope of the project.

Maren Radeny

Science Officer, AICCRA East and Southern Africa

In 2023, women have continued to be active agents in the scaling of climate-smart technologies and information services through AICCRA activities. Of the 4 million individuals we reached this year, 1.6 million were women.  

We recognize the crucial role women play as climate-smart champions in their communities, take for example Phoebe Mwangangi, a small-scale farmer from Makueni County, Kenya, who joined AICCRA at key climate events in 2023.

Through training for women’s groups and women-led, community-based organizations, the inclusion of female service providers and extension agents in dissemination, and using accelerator programs as scaling mechanisms to support women-led SMEs, 35 CIS and CSA technologies have reached women in our focus areas.

In Mali, the fabrication and use of the GEM parboiling technique resulted in improvements in rice grain quality, and "Savings for Change" clubs enhanced women’s access to finance and increased their CSA investments leading to increased net income by USD 497 per hectare.

AICCRA’s Gender-Smart Accelerator Challenge in Senegal, which focused specifically on gender in the country’s agrifood system, has successfully catalysed USD 4.3 of private investment for every USD 1 invested. Also in Senegal, co-designed advisories with women-led organizations were disseminated to livestock keepers through mobile phones and gender sensitive radio programs, and SenAgriHack, a crowd-sourcing innovation challenge, evaluated proposals and granted winners based on their gender responsive and transformative outcomes.

AICCRA in Ghana led the development of a business model to support women’s access to CIS and CSA bundles through telecoms company Esoko’s novel ‘Grain for phone’ initiative. Across our direct extension activities in Ghana, 39 percent of total farmers we reached were women. 

In Ethiopia, we supported the customized delivery of gender-responsive small ruminant Smart-Pack (including health, productivity, breeding, nutrition, credits, digital marketing) and fertilizer recommendation advisories.  

To share learnings from our activities with others in Africa’s agricultural sector, AICCRA’s Gender and Social Inclusion (GSI) cluster conducted a series of webinars on gender. We also provided training on gender and climate hotspot mapping, training with the World Bank’s Food Systems Resilience Program (FSRP), and held a workshop on women’s leadership in agriculture and climate research with CORAF.

The inclusion of youth is another important dimension of AICCRA’s work. Young people are a vital part of realizing our climate-smart vision for Africa's future. We need to be engaging them in creating and implementing solutions to the challenges facing us.

In Zambia, we hosted a Demonstration Day for the three groups of young startups who participated in our Internship and Innovation Grant (I2G) challenge. Agri hackathons in Senegal and Kenya offered young and upcoming entrepreneurs the chance to pitch, learn from and engage with others in the agribusiness space. 

And during the inaugural Africa Climate Summit, we supported the African Union in hosting the Climate Action Innovation Hub which featured 70 innovators, largely made up of young people and women.

To be climate-smart is to be inclusive. We cannot accelerate action at the scale or pace needed without women and youth in the conversations, at the decision-making tables, and on the frontlines in the fields. 

We’ve made important progress in gender and social inclusion but there is still much to be done. As we prepare for the next phase of AICCRA’s work, we’re committed to working closely with our teams and partners to ensure women and youth are leading the way to a climate-smart Africa with us.

Faustina Obeng Adomaa

Gender and Social Inclusion Expert, AICCRA Ghana