Agriculture is key to the economies of East Africa. The agriculture and food sector accounts for 25-40% of the GDP of countries in Eastern and Southern Africa, with about 60% of the region’s population employed in agriculture.

It also plays a key role in helping communities across Africa adapt to climate change.

So, it’s important to not only identify the most powerful innovations and interventions that supports the resilience of smallholder farming communities to climate change; but it is also vital that we support farmers to take advantage of the opportunities that are available to advocate for their own needs with global policymakers. 

Farmers—and the organizations that support them—can strengthen the voice and participation of farmers in decision making bodies like the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

I am proud to serve as the Chief Executive Officer of the Eastern Africa Farmers’ Federation (EAFF), an umbrella organization of 24 farmer organizations in 10 countries across the Eastern Africa region, which altogether represent some 25 million smallholder farmers. 

Our mandate is to empower farmers to achieve their food security and improve their livelihoods. This can only be achieved through mutually benefitting partnerships with governments, research organizations, universities, civil society organizations, private sector and development partners to help represent, advocate and lobby for the interests of Eastern Africa farmers and to build their capacities.

Under our recent strategic plan (2022-2028), the EAFF is prioritizing engagement in the climate policy discourse as a key focus and cross-cutting thematic area. Strengthening this aspect of our work will help farmers to represent their needs in national, continental and global debates and contribute towards policymaking, ultimately influencing their long-term resilience. 

EAFF has made several achievements in recent years, having joined major climate policy networks and formed more strategic alliances for a stronger voice at the world’s stage.

EAFF is now being recognized as an important stakeholder in the climate space, which has led to new partnerships and funding opportunities. 

Ahead of both the UN’s COP27 and COP28 climate summits, EAFF was thrilled to co-organize with the Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA) preparatory workshops for our member organizations. 

AICCRA’s role was pivotal, sharing policy engagement tools, research and innovation led by CGIAR, the world’s largest publicly funded research partnership for food security. 

They also invited influential stakeholders from across their networks, who provided a broad range of perspectives on the challenges that we at EAFF want to address with our members, including on accessing climate finance and developing stronger relationships with the private sector.  

Through AICCRA’s contribution, these EAFF workshops were informed by the technical expertise that EAFF needed to write a compelling call-to-action for global leaders.

That ‘call-to-action’ was a huge milestone for EAFF and its role in climate action in East Africa, and is a testament to EAFF’s strengthened capacity to engage in the complex and fast-moving arenas of climate policy. 

For instance, our COP27 call to action demanded increased support for developing locally-led climate action interventions for small-scale farming systems.

And our COP28 call to action was even more ambitious, calling for the Loss and Damage Fund to provide adequate and direct support to small-scale farmers and pastoralists and ensuring that financial pledges are fulfilled and forthcoming.

But writing a call to action is not enough.

Thanks to the connections EAFF made through our partnership with AICCRA, we now enjoy fruitful dialogue with Africa’s leading climate negotiators, such as Dr. George Wamukoya (PhD) from the African Group of Negotiators Expert Support (AGNES). 

EAFF are now regular contributors to AGNES meetings ahead of key climate negotiations, for which we enjoy technical and scientific support from our CGIAR collaborators thanks to AICCRA’s targeted matchmaking, based on our members’ needs.

Mr. Stephen Muwaya, Uganda’s former Climate change negotiator, authored a report on the role of agriculture in the last five COP summits. This report was instrumental in giving a genesis on the inclusion of agriculture in the negotiations, the reports that were done (Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture) and the adoption of the Sharm el-Sheikh joint work on implementation of climate action on agriculture and food security. This report has been key in awareness creation for the EAFF members. 

AICCRA contributed a policy calendar and a policy timeline to the report that have helped us coordinate better and strengthen the engagement of farmers in important climate change dialogues. 

This improved coordination has led to more strategic planning and opportunities to advocate on behalf of our members at high profile events, including the inaugural Africa Climate Summit in Nairobi. 

It has also provided us opportunities to get ‘in the room’ and become not only a visible advocate for our members, but an influential one too. 

EAFF President Elizabeth Nsimadala directly addressed the negotiators on the Sharm El-Sheikh Joint work on implementation of climate action on agriculture and food security at COP28 in Dubai. That work is part of the official UNFCCC negotiations which “recognizes the fundamental priority of safeguarding food security and ending hunger, and the particular vulnerabilities of food production systems to the adverse impacts of climate change.”

Our partnership with AICCRA is growing and it’s mutually beneficial; we are able to engage more and access a broader audience while AICCRA is able to reach its target audience of farmers and ensure their work is grassroots and farmer-relevant.

Author

• Stephen Muchiri, Chief Executive Officer, the Eastern Africa Farmers Federation (EAFF)

Further reading

• AICCRA Report: Policy and advocacy development workshop: Enhancing the role of farmers in climate change policy in East Africa
• AICCRA Presentation: Enhancing Farmer Engagement in Climate Policy
• EAFF Report: African climate processes, actors and institutions: What this means for farmers
• EAFF Blog: EAFF Climate change development workshop

Header image: AfDB (Source)