Background

The CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) in West Africa and CORAF have collaborated over the past decade, leading many efforts at regional and national levels by bringing together researchers and policy makers to revitalize genuine mutual engagement to address the challenges of climate change.

Building on this partnership, the AICCRA (Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa) project is supporting CORAF to advance this agenda and provide technical support in foresight analysis in the region.

About AICCRA

The AICCRA project contributes to the construction of an African future that is climate-smart and driven by science and innovation in the agricultural field. It is led by Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT and supported by a grant from the World Bank's International Development Association (IDA).

AICCRA works to increase access to climate information services and Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) technologies for millions of smallholder farmers across Africa. AICCRA investments are concentrated in six main countries namely Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Senegal and Zambia with the implementation of four components (i) Knowledge Generation and Sharing, (ii) Strengthening Partnerships for Delivery, (iii) Validating Climate-Smart Agriculture Innovations through Piloting and (iv) Project management. The sub-regional component of AICCRA in West Africa is implemented through the creation of multi-stakeholder partnerships of existing scientific and educational networks and centers in order to achieve results that cannot be achieved easily, or not at all, by engaging with individual partners at national level.

Component 1 of the project foresees the generating and sharing of knowledge through the strengthening of the Africa-wide provision of agro-climate services by national agricultural and meteorological agencies and the planning of investments in Climate-Smart Agriculture (AIC) by national Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) and private companies.

Smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa are faced, among other challenges, the access to funding, specifically for the acquisition of technologies and innovations that can promote the effective implementation of CSA. When these funds are available, their prompt disbursements are often impeded by cumbersome administrative processes, issues related to lack of understanding and communication between technicians, politicians, and implementers, etc. This workshop aims to facilitate the operationalization of investment policy measures provided in policy documents for the development of the agricultural sector. The results of such a meeting will enable the acceleration of the acquisition of technologies and innovations (T&Is) and thus, the scaling up of CSA in West Africa.

About CORAF

The West and Central Africa Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF), works to contribute to a sustainable reduction of poverty and food insecurity in West and Central Africa.

To achieve this goal, CORAF is working to increase economic growth, generated by agriculture, and to improve the agricultural research system of the sub-region. The Strategic Plan 2018-2027 focuses on 4 Priority Intervention Domains: (i) Agriculture, food, and nutrition security, (ii) Policy, institutions, markets, and trade, (iii) Gender, youth, and social equity; and (iv) Knowledge Management and Foresight.

Objective

The main objective of this two-day workshop is to contribute to the operationalization of the measures and political wills as presented in the investment plans and other agricultural policy documents to accelerate the scaling of CSA in West Africa.
Specifically, this entails:

• Discuss current challenges related to the scaling of CSA in West Africa,
• Identify measures and political wills for investment in CSA technologies and innovations based on policy documents,
• Foster the acquisition of these CSA technologies and innovations.

About the event

This will be a face-to-face workshop, in the form of plenary sessions and group works. Plenary presentations will be followed by discussions. Findings from group works will be presented in plenary sessions followed by discussions and validation.

At the end of the workshop,
a) participants are reminded of the concept of CSA as well as its options;
b) measures and political wills to invest in CSA technologies and innovations are identified and analysed;
c) recommendations are made for the operationalization of these measures and wills;
d) a roadmap is made available to accelerate the acquisition of CSA technologies and innovations.

The workshop participants will be (i) representatives of the countries involved in the Food Systems Resilience Program (PRSA) (Burkina Faso, Ghana, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Chad and Togo), (ii) focal points of National Plans for Agricultural Investment and Foods security, (iii) the AICCRA West Africa team, and (iv) the CORAF team.