Climate action for smart agri-food systems under a One Health approach: Strengthening academia capacity in Benin

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AICCRA Ghana in collaboration with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture is organising a workshop in Benin to build the academic system's capacity to develop a curriculum on climate-smart agriculture (CSA) under the framework of One Health approach. The outcomes are meant to catalyse effective mainstreaming of CSA, climate information services (CIS) and associated One Health innovations into higher education curricula.

Background 

In sub-Saharan Africa, the primary sector accounts for a large share of economic activity, with a large proportion of the population involved in agriculture.

In Benin, agriculture contributes an average of 32.7% to GDP, 75% to export earnings, 15% to government revenue and provides around 70% of jobs. However, in addition to the difficulties already known and faced by this sector, climate change is further impacting agricultural production, with great variability in rainfall, increasingly frequent pockets of drought and changes in temperature trends. 

Much has been done by the scientific community in the fields of climate information services and the development of climate-smart agricultural practices and innovations. However, there remains gaps between research and development or uptake. As a result, many research products or new technologies or innovations developed remain unadopted and/or unscaled.

Through this workshop, AICCRA will help to coordinate and capacitate the research and the university scientific community in Benin to enhance the resilience of the country's agrifood systems. 

Building the capacities of  West African universities is critical to enhancing transboundary response to climate change. 

Expected outputs and outcomes

Participants are expected to:

  1. Analyze the opportunities and challenges associated with the development of programs/curricula relating to the One Health approach and climate-resilient agriculture in the Beninese academic system . 
  2. Develop a roadmap for the development of One Health and climate-resilient agriculture programs/curricula in the Beninese education system.
  3. Analyze the adoption of climate-smart practices from the perspective of researchers, using systems thinking (ST) and systems dynamics (SD) approaches.
     

Follow @CGIARAfrica for updates on this workshop and other activities.