World Bank’s $100m support for climate-smart agriculture in Africa timely

For more than three decades, Asante, a smallholder farmer at Bonkua Number One, a community near Kyekyewere in the Eastern Region has been relying on indigenous knowledge for weather forecast ahead of every planting season.

The Genesis

He observes the stars, cloud, wind and the emergence of some insect species over a period to predict the onset of early rains to prepare his land and mobilise seedlings with the hope of a successful season.

Maize is his stock-in-trade, and thus reliable rainfall and favourable temperature variability is crucial for him to achieve higher yields to fend for his family of seven.

“Rainfall in the last six years has not been consistent. This year, the rain has been good, but it comes and ceases at a time we don’t anticipate. Because of that I could not plan properly and that really affected my yields,” he said.

Information Accessibility

Access to reliable ad timely weather information is a major challenge for smallholder farmers in Ghana. Although some organisations are helping to bridge the gap by creating platforms to deliver information to farmers, scalability has been a problem due to limited resources.

Although the Ghana Meteorological Agency has in recent times improved its weather information generation systems, the distribution of the data to farmers (who need it most) has not been the best. The data is mostly shared on social media platforms, which cannot be accessed by smallholder farmers who either do not have smart phones or live in locations where there is no internet connectivity.

With climate change affecting rainfall patterns, Asante and his colleague smallholder farmers say they cannot rely on traditional knowledge to forecast the weather-and in the absence of robust national plan that focuses on adaptation-the sustainability of the livelihoods of these farmers is in limbo.

With weather patterns becoming less favourable, farmers in Africa, who largely depend on rain to cultivate their farms, are battling with extreme weather conditions such as droughts, floods, and windstorms.

The State of the Climate in Africa 2022 report shows that the rate of temperature increase in Africa has accelerated in recent decades, with weather- and climate-related hazards becoming more severe.

Climate-smart-technology

Experts have advocated access to climate-smart technology and advisory services as necessary intervention for farmers in the region to be able to build resilience, increase their yields and promote food security.

It is in response to this call that the Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA) has been working with national and regional partners to transform climate services and scale climate-smart agriculture; increasing access to and use of CGIAR innovations for the benefit of millions of small-scale farmers in Africa.

Through the AICCRA project, scientists, and researchers from across CGIAR-the world’s largest publicly funded agricultural research network-support African national and regional partners with scientific and technical capacity development, with the aim of enhancing climate information services and validating packages of technologies, services or practices for agriculture that are validated to be ‘climate-smart’.

World Bank investment

At the recent climate negotiations in Dubai (COP 28), the adoption of climate-smart agriculture in Africa received a boost, with the World Bank Group confirming additional $100 million for the AICCRA project, which means that the CGIAR can continue to build on the project’s achievements.

By the end of 2023, AICCRA is set to have supported nearly five million smallholder farmers and other African food systems stakeholders with better access to innovations, which support them to make informed decisions about how to grow crops or manage livestock in a fast-changing climate.

Reacting to the development, Dr Stephen Yeboah, Senior Research Scientist, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research-Crop Research Institute, welcomed the investment, saying it would help to sustain ongoing projects aimed at up-scaling climate-smart agriculture among smallholder farmers.

He said one of the main challenges impeding efforts to build climate resilience among smallholder farmers was the lack of funding sources to sustain impactful projects in the region.

“If the projects are short term, you may not be able to sustain the impact. If the project can be sustained for at least 15 years, you will be in a better portion to create sustainable impact for the farmers,” he said.

Recommendations

Dr Yeboah recommended that investments in the agriculture sector should be geared towards adaptation technologies to help farmers on the continent to build resilience against climate change.

He said farmers required reliable weather information to plan their activities and advised smallholder farmers to follow weather information to guide their farming practices to help boost their productivity amid the changing climate.

Although African countries contribute to less than four per cent of global emissions, its citizens are most affected by climate change.

With Africa alone holding about 60 per cent of the world’s uncultivated arable land, the agriculture sector accounts for 35 per cent of Africa’s Gross Domestic Product and employs more Africans than any other sector.

Africa’s population keeps growing, necessitating the need for the continent to attain sufficient food security to be able to feed its people in the long term.

Experts have warned that if the continent continued to rely on rain-fed agriculture without intentional investment in climate-smart technologies, the future of agriculture on the continent will be in danger.