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In Nairobi summit, CIAT to officially launch Africa climate-smart agriculture profiles

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Ethiopia
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Alliance of Bioversity & CIAT
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CIAT is rolling out climate-smart agriculture (CSA) profiles for four additional African countries. They are Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Niger, and Ethiopia.

CSA refers to practices that aim to increase farm productivity while helping farmers adapt to climate change or reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or both.

The profiles analyze such practices, but they also outline the challenges that countries face due to the changing climate and the impact that might have in the future.

They, in particular, take into account specific conditions of countries.

“When it comes to CSA, one size doesn’t fit all,” said CSA Country Profiles Coordinator Sebastian Grey. “To help ensure adoption of practices in a given location, you have to understand the challenges and the benefits at the local level, and work with farmers and partners on the ground — that’s what we’ve strived to do in developing these profiles.”

The rollout forms part of the official launch of all Africa CSA profiles to be held Wednesday (May 16) at the Africa Climate Smart Agriculture Summit in Nairobi, Kenya.

With the new profiles, the total of those focused on Africa numbers 11; three more are currently in production. CIAT has already published and launched some of them in-country.

The seven other countries with CSA profiles comprise Kenya, Rwanda, Senegal, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia, and Uganda.

In the case of Kenya, CIAT has also produced climate risk profiles for 31 counties. These subnational profiles map risks across certain agricultural value chains in those areas and detail practices that can help these regions mitigate those risks.

“By understanding climate change risks in a given location, you can better understand and tailor climate change adaptation strategies to the local context,” Grey said. “And with scientific analysis of appropriate risk and cost-benefit data, you can help unlock private sector investment in those adaptation strategies or specific value chains.”

According to Grey, CIAT has been “getting a lot of demand” for subnational climate risk profiles from other African countries.

The Tanzanian government, for example, has requested CIAT to carry out climate risk profiling for all 31 regions of the country. According to Grey, there’s also a “good opportunity” to conduct the same for the Southern Agriculture Growth Corridor of Tanzania to enhance the resilience of the country’s agricultural value chains.

Likewise, there’s a demand for climate risk profiling of specific crops. CIAT-Africa is now doing this for coffee in Uganda and considering undertaking the same for bean and dairy products in Ethiopia and Rwanda.

Beyond getting buy-in from stakeholders in countries, CIAT’s work to develop the CSA country and subnational climate risk profiles has won recognition. It has landed in the shortlist for the Climate-Smart Agriculture Project of the Year Award 2018; announcement of the winner will take place during the Africa Climate Smart Agriculture Summit.

Additional information:

The CSA country profiles and the subnational climate risk profiles are products of the CIAT-led CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture, and Food Security, or CCAFS. They are based on work commissioned and led by the World Bank Group to identify country-specific baselines and entry points for scaling out CSA, through data analysis and series of dialogues with national stakeholders.

The official launch of the Africa CSA profiles will take place during the event “Profiling climate risk and CSA opportunities to de-risk agriculture” at the two-day (May 15-16, 2018) Africa Climate Smart Agriculture Summit in Nairobi, Kenya. The event will feature a panel discussion involving representatives from multilateral banks, civil society, and the private sector.