Background

MITA's objective is to increase the adoption and use of the best agricultural technologies and innovations to transform African agriculture. Indeed, as part of its strategic objectives, CORAF ambitions to promote access to and scaling up of agricultural technologies and innovations across West & Central Africa. This concept of Market for Agricultural Innovations and Technologies has been effective during the implementation of the West African Agricultural Productivity Program (WAAPP) over the period 2007-2019. And since then, MITA has been a flagship activity of CORAF for the promotion of agricultural technologies and innovations through bringing face to face the generators and providers of technologies and the potential users of these technologies.

Taking advantage of the longstanding partnership of CORAF with the CGIAR through CCAFS program, which is now strengthened through AICCRA, this event aims to pave the way on how CGIAR climate research can inform gender and nutrition sensitive (GNS) innovations, which is the topic of this 2023 MITA. Started in 2021, AICCRA is covering Ghana, Mali, and Senegal as intervention countries in WA. This IDA funded project works to make climate information services (CIS) and climate-smart agriculture (CSA) technologies more accessible to millions of smallholder farmers across Africa. After almost 3 years implementation in the 3 IDA anchored countries in WA, AICCRA has generated research outputs that have been evidenced for successfully inducing gender and nutrition outcomes for climate-smart agriculture (CSA) and climate information services (CIS).

MITA appears an excellent springboard to ‘’sell’’ these ground evidenced GNS success cases for their large-scale uptake by potential users across West & Central Africa. It offers a great opportunity for AICCRA to share its current results and lessons learnt from its action research in the sub-region, which may support and backstop the spillover of the scientific knowledge generated from the AICCRA anchored countries, to benefit other countries in WCA. Indeed, various gender and social inclusion successes by AICCRA country, regional and thematic clusters have been documented and reported as tangible innovations that need to be made accessible for large-scale uptake and use.

Through this event, AICCRA will share knowledge and information on gender and nutrition sensitive technologies and innovations that have been evidenced as actionable and effective CSA and CIS options for various value chains and associated cropping systems in West Africa, focusing mainly on dryland cereals in Senegal, Rice in Mali, and root & tubers in Ghana. In addition, successful scaling, and spillover mechanisms of some of these GNS options by sub-regional organizations such as CORAF, AGRHYMET and WASCAL will be discussed.

Expected outputs and outcomes.

The outcomes of this side event are in alignment mainly with AICCRA targeted indicators PDO 3 and IPI 3.4. It can also help achieve IPI 3.2. We expect from the side event that:

• Current AICCRA gender and nutrition sensitive CSA and CIS innovations from WA countries are made available to participants and users.
• Regional spillover mechanisms are identified by sub-regional organizations in support to the scaling of the science evidenced-based gender and nutrition sensitive CSA and CIS options.

Implementation and agenda (Time in UTC/GMT)

The event will be in-person and will take place on Sept 14, 2023, during the forum of MITA in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. It is structured around 3 main segments:

• 1) An introductory keynote to pave the road on the AICCRA strategy and experience for scaling gender and nutrition sensitive CSA and CIS; this will be followed by presentations of potential gender and nutrition sensitive CSA and CIS innovations that available for scaling by each of the AICCRA clusters.
• 2) Panel discussion with sub-regional organizations on how to leverage their regional level initiatives to implement spillover effect across West and Central Africa.
• 3) Questions and answers by participants.
• 4) Closing remarks

Other AICCRA engagements at MITA 2023:

September 12:  ILRI Presentation: “The AICCRA Gender Smart Agriculture framework, as implemented in Ghana, Mali and Senegal” – highlights the Gender Smart Agriculture framework developed out of CGIAR research on gender, climate and food security.  It will highlight the activities in AICCRA countries in West Africa in gender-responsive approaches in crop production, processing and climate information services. (Plenary session, 12:45-13:00)

September 13: Launch of the AICCRA Database on Gender-responsive climate-smart agriculture, that brings together information on climate-smart agriculture (CSA) technologies and practices from around the world that have been proven to benefit women smallholder farmers. It is being launched at the 2023 CORAF Market for Agricultural Innovations and Technologies (MITA) conference (12-15 Sept in Burkina Faso) and aligns to the databases established by West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF) a key AICCRA partner in West Africa. (Plenary session, 12;15 – 12:35)

September 14: Presentation on “AICCRA Gender and Social Inclusion – Lessons learned and taking forward - common success factors”, at the side event 'Accelerating uptake of gender and nutrition sensitive climate-smart agriculture and climate information services in West Africa' organized by AICCRA West Africa.