Abstract

As part of the AICCRA, the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) are tasked to develop curricula and training materials to accelerate the mainstreaming of Climate Information Services (CIS) and Climate- Smart Agriculture (CSA) into University’s curricula in Africa. This report describes the activities of a training of trainers’ (ToT) workshop on Climate Smart Nutrient and Water Management in Crop Production course module . The University of Zambia (UNZA) organised and hosted the Training of Trainers (ToT) workshop from the 29th August - 2nd September, 2023 at Chita Lodge in Kafue District of Zambia with the objective of increasing awareness on climate-smart soil nutrient and water management at university level and with non-academic audiences. The ToT included 28 participants (about 39% women) drawn from various institutions involved in training, dissemination and promotion of CSA and CIS in Zambia. These institutions included the Ministry of Agriculture, Zambia National Information Services (NAIS), Zambia College of Agriculture (ZCA), Natural Resource Development College (NRDC), Kasisi Agriculture Training Centre (KATC), Indaba Agriculture Policy and Research Institute (IAPRI), AfriSeed and relevant Departments at the University of Zambia. The workshop was organised as a three-day Modular Training of Trainers workshop organised in interactive sessions and a field visit. The Sessions included: (i) Official opening and setting of the scene; (ii) Concepts and principles of soil health and nutrient management in crop production; (iii) Soil: plant-water interrelations; (iv) Challenges of climate change to soils and soil fertility management; (v) Water management for crop production; (vi) Climate smart crop production and nutrient management Systems; (vii) Nutrient management for climate change adaptation and crop production; and, a field visit to two Conservation Agriculture (CA) practicing farms. The following issues and recommendations emerged from the ToT: (i) There is need to scale-up the training to cover additional institutions and farmers for enhancement of CSA practices; (ii) There is need to contextualize the module to suit the different stakeholders and environments; (iii) There is need to develop a toolkit translating scientific terms into the major local languages of Zambia; and, (iv) based on the success of the training workshop, the Department of Soil Science has since received requests to organise similar training to targeting seed companies in climate smart agriculture. We therefore recommend that: (i) a scale-up of ToT be implemented; (ii) the next phase of AICCRA includes the development of contextualized materials including booklets, pamphlets, flyers, videos, bulletins and newsletters. Such materials could be developed in partnership with the media houses.