AICCRA West Africa, in collaboration with country clusters and regional partners West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF), AGRHYMET Regional Centre, West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL) and Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM), is convening a side event during the Market of Innovations and Agricultural Technologies (MITA), led by CORAF. 

Through this event, AICCRA will share knowledge and information on CSA and CIS technologies and innovations that have been evidenced as effective for integrated pest and disease management 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 technologies and innovations by sub-regional organisations such as CORAF, AGRHYMET and WASCAL will be discussed. 

MITA 2024

The objective of MITA 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.

In 2024, MITA will put technologies and innovations for the integrated management of pests, plant, and animal diseases at the heart of the discussions.

About AICCRA at MITA

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 integrated pest and disease management - connecting to the theme of MITA 2024. 

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 four years implementation in the 3 IDA anchored countries in WA, AICCRA has generated research outputs that have been evidenced for successfully inducing outcomes related to pest and disease management. 

MITA appears an excellent springboard to showcase these validated success cases for their large-scale uptake by potential users across West and 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 focus countries, to benefit other countries in West and Central Africa. Indeed, various CSA and CIS technologies and innovations successful for integrated pest and disease management by AICCRA country and regional clusters have been documented and reported as tangible innovations to be made accessible for large-scale uptake and use. 

Expected outputs and outcomes

• The regional pest and disease outbreak preparedness and response plan in West and Central Africa, developed with the support of AICCRA are made available to participants and users
• Current AICCRA CSA and CIS innovations for integrated pest and disease management from WA countries are made available to participants and users

Implementation and agenda 

The in-person event is structured around three main segments: 

• An introductory presentation by AICCRA WA cluster on the regional pest and disease outbreak preparedness and response plan in West and Central Africa
• Presentations of CSA and CIS innovations for integrated pest and disease management by AICCRA clusters in Mali (led by Africa Rice), Senegal (led by the International Institute for Livestock Research - ILRI) and Ghana (led by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture - IITA)
• Q&A 

Join the livestream here

Other engagements at MITA 2024

In addition to the event, AICCRA will be participating in a number of other engagements, including:

• Bilateral "B2B" sessions with West Africa Food System Resilience Program (FSRP) countries
  
  Following the valuable contributions of FSRP country teams during recent workshops focused on rice value chain technologies and the Gender-Smart Accelerator Challenge program, CORAF and AICCRA West Africa are organising B2B sessions to serve as a platform for more in-depth discussions on how to plan and strategize the implementation of scaling activities proposed at these workshops, which will be implemented by countries under the Food Systems Resilience Program (FSRP).