AICCRA key messages for COP27

• African climate negotiators are finding common ground on the role that food and agriculture can play in climate action, in part thanks to AICCRA support ahead of COP27.
• AICCRA engagement with its partners across Africa shows that too few stakeholders understand what we mean when the term ‘transformation’ is overused without practical, tangible guidance on what transformation could look like in a given country or community. 
• So ahead of COP27, AICCRA developed a diagnostic framework and checklist that enables African policymakers to set policy priorities for the kind of transformation they seek of national and regional food systems under climate change. 
• AICCRA also played a significant role in crafting the African Union’s Climate Change and Resilient Development Strategy and Action Plan, recently ratified by member states ahead of COP27.

This hub brings together AICCRA and partner content such as events, reports, blogs and the stories of farmers who we have the pleasure to work with in Africa.  

We do this to inform and inspire those attending COP27, helping our partners make the case for concrete action to make African food systems more resilient under climate change, and how that transformation can be achieved.  

Ultimately, we want to build momentum for the commitments, policies and finance that can help make African agriculture and food systems more resilient against future crises, delivering a climate-smart future for Africa’s youth.  

About AICCRA  

AICCRA works to make climate information services (CIS) and climate-smart agriculture (CSA) more accessible to millions of smallholder farmers across Africa. 

We believe that with better access to technology and advisory services—linked to information about effective response measures—farmers can better anticipate climate-related events to take preventative action that helps their communities safeguard livelihoods and the environment. 

AICCRA builds on five decades of CGIAR innovation - the world’s largest research partnerships for food security.  

But AICCRA sets a new path for CGIAR as it transitions to ‘OneCGIAR’, spearheading work that’s dedicated to scaling tested and proven innovations developed by CGIAR and its partners over the years. 

Moreover, AICCRA seeks answers to fundamental questions of the economic, social and institutional contexts in which innovation can make a difference to farmers.  

We discover how innovation can and should be packaged  together with complementary actions and policies that deliver impact beyond the sum of the parts of any one innovation alone. 

AICCRA has reached more than a million beneficiaries with climate information services and climate-smart agriculture since we began working in 2021.  

What we have learned through this experience is that in Africa, innovation is a necessary but insufficient factor in making food systems more resilient under climate change.  

We must look beyond innovation, and better understand how innovation takes root in Africa.  

COP27 offers the world a chance to assess progress on climate action.  

It provides opportunities to showcase novel innovation to address the climate challenge.  

But unless development partners understand and respond adequately to the social and institutional ecosystems in which they hope innovation can flourish, the projects they support are destined to be unsustainable and fail.  

For organizations committed to climate action, AICCRA’s experience has twofold implications:  

First, we must embed experts from different fields into inter- and transdisciplinary teams. 

Second, we must broaden the focus of research beyond technological innovations alone, shifting to an approach that engages and involves policymakers and practitioners in a broader constellation of institutions and organizations who enable the needed transformation.  

Over the past year and more, AICCRA has used its experience of scaling climate-smart innovations to draw out broader lessons and strategies for its regional and continental partners, including the African Union and African Group of Negotiators Expert Support (AGNES). 

The African Union Heads of State and Government adopted the African Union Climate Change and Resilient Development Strategy and Action Plan (2022-2032) in February of this year.    

It is a significant achievement for the continent, as it has laid the foundation for joint climate action that benefits more than a billion Africans through a common framework for action.   

In the course of the consultation process and drafting of the strategy, AICCRA played a significant technical backstopping role; this included support for design and facilitation of validation meetings and assistance in engaging a wide array of thematic experts across the continent for contributions and subsequent synthesis of technical input in the drafting process. 

With the support of AICCRA, African climate negotiators are finding common ground on the role that food and agriculture can play in climate action, ahead of the forthcoming COP27 climate summit in Egypt later this year. 

AICCRA’s partnership with organizations like the Africa Group of Negotiators Expert Support (AGNES) is a cornerstone of the project's impact.  

An AGNES-AICCRA pre-COP meeting delivered a common African position on the future of Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture (KJWA) and a draft text for negotiation at 57th session of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) of the UNFCCC.   

Through these partnerships, we’re building networks that are informed and empowered by CGIAR science to move towards common African positions and priorities in the UNFCCC process at COP27.  

Media contact

All media enquiries should be directed to Rhys Bucknall-Williams, AICCRA's Global Communications and Knowledge Manager

r.bucknall@cgiar.org

+31619544829