ClimDev-Africa.org ©2023. All right reserved
African economies have grown over the last decade in spite of the global economic downturn, and this growth is expected to continue at an average rate of 5.3% in 2014(AEO, 2013). However, the wealth generated from economic growth still needs to spread to the poor majority whose livelihoods mainly depend on climate sensitive sectors such as agriculture and fisheries. The inability of Africa’s agriculture to match the needs of a growing population has left around 300 million people frequently hungry and has forced the continent to spend billions of dollars annually importing food. Climate change is expected to complicate efforts in finding solutions to the problem as it causes severe disruptions to agricultural production systems, the environment, and the biodiversity that supports food production systems. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report, surpassing a 20C temperature rise could worsen the existing food deficit challenge of the continent and thereby hinder most African countries from attaining the MDG of reducing extreme poverty and ending hunger by 2015. Hence, Africa must look into options that can turn climate challenges into opportunities, especially those that improve agricultural performance and enhance capacity to facilitate broad-based poverty reduction and food security for all.
Africa has the potential to reverse this perennial scenario of food deficit and rise to the challenge. Given the enormous land resources suitable for agriculture (of which 60% is unutilized) and ample fresh water bodies in the continent, Africa can transform its agricultural production systems. By empowering people with climate change information and knowledge, African farmers will be able to produce food not just for themselves but will be able to do so as a business and money-making venture. The use of climate knowledge will lower losses due to storage, high transport costs, and poor organization for processing and retailing. A focus on agricultural value chains, rural entrepreneurship, and ICT could also bring lucrative employment opportunities in rural areas and reduce the rate of rural-urban migration of the young. Attracting and retaining youth engagement in the agricultural value chain is critical in enhancing the performance and sustainability of agriculture, as future farmers will be dominated by younger people.
Africa’s capacity to feed itself now and in the future will require increasing investments in climate change research, biotechnology research and development, and innovation. Also required will be making technology accessible and affordable to farmers, enhancing opportunities for easy access to agricultural finance and insurance, facilitating markets and trade at all levels, and creating enabling environment for private sector investment in the agriculture value chain. Enhanced agricultural performance, however, cannot be achieved without investing in the clean and efficient energy that is necessary to drive transformation of the agriculture and food value chain without raising GHG emission levels. Equally important is a better understanding of the agriculture, energy, and water nexus and how Africa can harness ecosystems and natural capital to feed itself.
Agriculture will remain a key driver of African economic growth, with a prime responsibility of providing employment opportunities for a rapidly growing and predominantly youthful population. The agricultural value chain therefore provides multiple entry points and pathways for advancing Africa’s transformative agenda toward a green economy and low carbon development. The four sub-themes of CCDA-IV will provide in-depth analyses of the agricultural value chain for reinvigorating productivity and achieving food security and sufficiency in the continent. At the same time, the sub-themes identify strategic areas for the alignment of the agricultural value chain and for propelling Africa into green and low carbon development. The conference discussions on green economy will thus centre on pulling together the emerging elements from the sub-themes.
The ClimDev-Africa Programme is organizing CCDA-IV as part of its continuous efforts to promote the use of climate information to enhance agricultural performance in a changing climate and to maintain the momentum of economic growth that will enable Africa to feed itself and eliminate poverty. CCDA-IV will focus on how Africa can feed its people and sustain its growth in the face of climate change challenges. It will investigate how to make use of available climate information, clean energy technologies, innovation, and research and development to enhance agricultural performance and achieve economic structural transformation. The conference will thus provide a platform for sharing experiences, addressing emerging climate challenges, drawing upon new knowledge, and exploring opportunities related to climate change that can enhance the agriculture value chain and thereby ensure food security now and in the future.
The theme of the conference is: "Africa Can Feed Africa Now: Translating Climate Knowledge into Action." This theme is especially relevant because the African Union celebrates 2014 as the Year of Agriculture and Food Security.
CCDA-IV will be convened in Marrakesh, Morocco from 8-10 October 2014.
Overall objective of CCDA-IV
To provide a platform for deliberating on how Africa can utilize climate knowledge to transform agricultural production systems in order to feed itself now and in the future and to improve the socio-economic wellbeing of its people.
Specific objectives
Outputs
Outcomes
Agriculture is one of the most important sectors in Africa, as it contributes about 30% of GDP, 50% of total exports, and employs more than 70% of the population in most non-oil exporting African countries. The sector is, however, vulnerable to climate variability and change, as it heavily relies on rainfall. The General Circulation Models (GCMs) also predict increasing temperature in the African region, which will negatively impact the continent’s agricultural production. The impact of climate change is more serious in Africa as the continent has low adaptive capacity due to limited institutional, economic, and financial capacity. Understanding the potential impacts of the current and projected climate change on African agriculture and identifying ways to adapt and mitigate its detrimental impacts are critical to improve agricultural performance and sustainability. An understanding of the role of ecosystems, natural capital, and efficient agricultural water management are also important for better agricultural productivity. This calls for African countries to adopt and develop agricultural policies that strengthen agricultural water resources management, taking into consideration ecosystem needs, to make agriculture inclusive and resilient to the predicted impacts of climate change.
Recently, appropriate emphasis has been given to the improvement of climate data and information in Africa through upgrading observation networks, rescuing past records, and assimilating the sparse observations with remotely sensed and re-analysis products. The improved climate data and information could be further analysed and packaged into standard baseline climatology, knowledge-bases, and decision-support tools specific to the prevailing climatic conditions in Africa. The packaging and translation of available climate data into useful information, making it accessible to end-users, and the scaling up of services can significantly contribute to the reduction of risks and uncertainties presented by a changing climate. Improved climate information will assist better management of agricultural water resources, timely planting and harvesting, storage, processing, and transportation to markets. The climate knowledge bases and decision-support tools provide climate-related scientific evidence for policy formulation and decision making in the agricultural and other development sectors and on plausible adaptation options and alternative climate-resilient development pathways in Africa.
Both the rural and urban people will be impacted by climate extremes as urban communities depend on food supply from rural areas and may suffer from escalating prices as a result of shortfalls in agricultural produce. Hence, bridging the rural-urban divide and strengthening linkages between these communities will be essential to (i) enhance agricultural performance, (ii) prevent and manage risks, (iii) reduce vulnerability, and (iv) build a climate-resilient agriculture sector that is capable of producing enough food for Africa and surplus for markets. Moreover, farmers in rural areas should have direct access to urban markets so as to increase farming incomes and encourage shifts to higher value crops or livestock.
This sub-theme therefore seeks to assess the implications of recent climate trends on Africa’s agricultural production and to encourage use of such information to advise policy makers in their investment priorities. It seeks to encourage the best use of climate change opportunities for adapting African agriculture to climate variability and change in order to enhance agricultural performance so that Africa can eventually feed itself. The sub-theme will further discuss options for making available timely climate information to end users – the farmer at the local level. It will also provoke dialogue among policy makers and other stakeholders on how to narrow the existing urban-rural divide. Finally, it will discuss options for strengthening linkages through the agricultural value chain and the impact of migration on food productionand food security.
This sub-theme will have the following topics:
Lack of access to energy services is one of the main constraints to economic development in Africa. Food security, the ultimate goal and a necessary prerequisite for achieving Africa’s transformative and sustainable development, cannot be achieved without sufficient energy. Only about 31% of the population of Sub-Saharan Africa has access to electricity, with a 14% access rate in rural areas where agriculture is the greatest employer. Energy drives agricultural production, transformation and value addition. It also drives transportation, trade, and consumption. However, insufficient energy and limited access to generated energy have contributed immensely to continued poverty in Africa. Many experts believe that the continent’s energy poverty can be adequately addressed by promoting the development of green energy. The impact of climate change on renewable energy systems (e.g., hydropower) is greater, as it affects hydrological flows and the allocation of variable and scarce water resources among competing end users. The complexity of risk-benefit management of climate change in the energy sector and broader consideration of competing uses of water require enhancing awareness, mainstreaming climate change into energy policies, and coordinating planning along the water-food-energy nexus. Therefore, the issue of food security in Africa should be seen in connection with secure energy and water supplies and in their relationship with agricultural productivity and ecosystems in a changing climate.
Innovation in forestry and bio-fuel resources will need to be addressed, as this impacts agricultural productivity. Moreover, over 80% of Africa's population relies on biomass as a primary source of energy, and the demand for forest resources is not abating (UNECA, 2014). The growing energy demand placed on forest resources requires an improved management framework, better forest stock data, and an overall biomass management strategy and policy. Moreover, bio-fuels development and their potential impacts on agriculture should be fully examined in Africa.
Finally, energy technologies have a direct beneficial effect on food security and enhanced efficiency across the agricultural value chain. Hence, effective deployment of energy technologies along the agricultural value chain requires implementation of best practices and technologies and creation of policies that fully address the energy technology-food security links.
Discussions in sub-theme II will dwell on the following topics:
The resilience of Africa’s agriculture under a changing climate requires, among other things, enabling policies and strategies that access finance and increase investment in the sector. Climate financing is one of the mechanisms to exploit climate change-related opportunities in adaptation and mitigation of climate change. Strategies and incentives for reducing emissions from forests and enhancement of carbon stocks such as CDM, REDD+, and the Green Climate Fund (GCF) have emerged as key international financing mechanisms under the UNFCCC. However, access to global financing mechanisms and Africa’s capacity to participate in carbon markets has been limited for various reasons. Consequently, of all the registered projects under the CDM, Africa has managed to get only 2%. Thus, Africa needs to strengthen its capacity to access and absorb funds available from external sources and create an enabling environment for private sector investments.
Agriculture also offers a great potential to mitigate climate change via carbon sequestration. The annual estimated CO2 sequestered in this sector amounts to 6 billion tons of CO2equivalent, of which 70% lies in developing countries. However, the Kyoto Protocol ignored carbon sequestration in agriculture, making it ineligible for climate finance despite its potential to provide additional income opportunities to farmers. In the Nairobi Work Programme, African leaders together with leaders of some other developing countries have thus advocated the inclusion of the agricultural sector in global climate finance. They have called for an urgent mechanism to assess and valorize agricultural carbon sequestration. Such negotiations should be continued in the ongoing global climate finance negotiations, while making efforts to improve the capacity of the continent to access the already available climate adaptation and mitigation funds and enhance the capacity of African countries to absorb climate funds. Developing innovative domestic climate financing mechanisms and creating an enabling environment to encourage private sector investment in the agriculture sector are also keys to ensuring enhanced agricultural performance and food security in Africa.
Therefore, this sub-theme seeks to address climate finance issues in negotiations, enhancing Africa’s capacity to access global climate finance, developing effective local financing mechanisms, and creating an enabling environment for private sector involvement in the agricultural sector. The sub theme will provide opportunities for sharing experiences in the development and implementation of national climate change policies, and strategies to access climate finance, including accessing finance through the Global Alliance on Climate Smart Agriculture. Moreover, the role of gender and the private sector in enhancing Africa’s capacity to mobilize, access, and implement climate finance will be discussed.
Overall, discussion topics in sub-theme III will focus on:
Millions of rural people in Africa who directly depend on agriculture encounter technical, economic, social, cultural, and traditional obstacles to improving their livelihoods. To cope with these obstacles, they have relied on indigenous knowledge and innovation through local experimentation and adaptation. Indigenous knowledge alone, however, is not enough to deal with the complex problems facing the agricultural sector. Emerging issues such as climate change require complementary innovation, science-based technologies, and supportive policies. Hence, scientific advancements and innovation are the keys to transforming African agriculture. In this context, significant efforts have been made during the last decade in developing drought-resistant, high-yielding, pest and disease-resistant crop varieties; biotechnology; and other agricultural technologies through public and private partnerships and international research institutions.
Nevertheless, the potential of these existing agricultural technologies and innovations in ameliorating economic welfare and food security of smallholder farmers is largely underutilized, as most technologies and research achievements remain in research centres, unknown and not utilized by farmers. In addition, public research institutions do not have sufficient resources to conduct the dissemination, distribution, and adoption of their research outputs in rural areas. Adoption of new technologies is limited by elevated input costs and the involvement of some risks that make most smallholder farmers reluctant to adopt them. ICT can also play a significant role in improving the productivity of the agriculture sector through timely provision of decision support and climate information to end-users. ICT uses platforms such as mobile phone networks and rural radios to relay this information. However, ICT is not fully integrated in national agricultural strategies in Africa. Consequently, the majority of ICT initiatives are used in small-scale pilot projects and do not target overall agricultural developmental policy goals.
This sub-theme will therefore review existing technological innovations, including ICT that can be leveraged in addressing the impacts of climate change to increase agricultural production, food security, and agricultural value chain transformation.
Under this sub theme the following topics will be discussed.
CCDA-IV will consist of a high-level dialogue, plenary sessions, parallel sessions, pre-events, side-events, and post-events. Eminent person swill deliver keynote speeches on challenges and opportunities of climate change and its implication for food security. Lead speakers and various expert presentations will provide the contextual analyses for achieving the overarching goal. The conference will feature prominent roles for Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), gender, youth, and farmers.
The first day of the conference will feature a high level plenary session where ministers and prominent experts will discuss the theme and set the tone of the conference. This session will be followed by speakers who will introduce plenary discussions on each sub-theme. A plenary session on green economy perspectives of the four subthemes will conclude the first day. Participants will have the opportunity to engage panelists and presenters of the sessions to further explore the points raised in the presentations.
To open up the space for deeper discussions on the specific climate change and development topics identified in the sub-themes, the second day will be dedicated to five parallel sessions. PowerPoint presentations tailored to each topic will be moderated by a selected expert on each sub-theme.
Pre-events
A pre-event forum will be organized to discuss the role of regional integration and trade liberalization for food security in Africa, as well as gender issues and the urgency of mechanization of smallholder agriculture.
Side-events
Exhibition
A poster exhibition on the sidelines of the conference will provide an opportunity to show-case, network, and share views on options within and outside Africa to translate climate knowledge into action in order to achieve a climate-resilient agricultural transformation and to cope with climate impacts.
ClimDev-Africa.org ©2023. All right reserved