The Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) in collaboration with the African Development Bank and the Wangari Mathai Institute have concluded a three-day regional forum on the future of resilient food systems in Africa.

The Forum, called the Future of Resilient Food Systems in Africa – AAAP Digital Solutions for a Changing Climate provided training aimed at strengthening the capacity of stakeholders from across Eastern Africa to design and implement solutions to improve food security and climate resilience and to facilitate knowledge sharing among farmers on approaches to scale up the use of Digital climate-informed advisory services, or DCAS.

Digital climate-informed advisory services are tools and platforms that integrate climate information into agricultural decision-making. These services range from digital mobile apps, radio, and online platforms to digitally enabled printed bulletins based on climate models and extension services that utilize climate information platforms.

DCAS offers crucial opportunities to build the resilience of small-scale producers in the face of worsening climate change impacts. From seasonal forecasts to pest advisories, effectively designed services provide producers with the resources to adapt to climate shocks and plan for new climate conditions.

Globally, more than 300 million small-scale agricultural producers have limited or no access to such services because service provision is still fragmented, unsustainable beyond project cycles, and not reaching the last mile.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the forum, Professor Patrick Verkooijen, CEO of Global Center on Adaptation called for urgent financial support to put Africa on the path of food sovereignty.

“Africa needs urgent support to scale up the implementation of adaptation solutions that are already yielding good results for irrigation, developing drought-resistant seeds, crops and livestock diversification, “ he said. 

“Through the African Adaptation Acceleration Programme, AAAP, we are rolling out a $350 million project to build resilience for food and nutrition security in the Horn of Africa towards mobilising new digital climate technology for market information, insurance products, financial services that can and must be tailored to smallholder farmers’ needs”, he added.

Speaking on behalf of the African Development Bank’s East Africa Regional Director General,  Nnenna Nwabufo, Dr Pascal Sanginga, Regional Sector Manager for Agriculture and Agro-Industries noted that the forum was timely, coming hot on the heels of the recently concluded Dakar 2 Feed Africa-Food Sovereignty and Resilience summit , organised by the African Development Bank.

“The Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program (AAAP) is already contributing to closing Africa’s adaptation gap by supporting African countries to make a transformational shift in their development pathways by putting climate adaptation and resilience at the center of their policies, programs, and institutions. There is no doubt that AAAP will be a strong component of the Country Food and Agricultural Delivery Compacts to accelerate the transformation of Africa’s food systems and build a more resilient Africa”, he said.

Professor Stephen Kiama Gitahi, Vice Chancellor of the University of Nairobi, reiterated the relevance of the forum pointing out that 70% of the population in Eastern Africa live in rural areas and depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. He encouraged the trainers to simplify the modules in a manner that removes the fear for technology and accelerate adaptation for rural farmers. Citing the legacy of late Professor Wangari Maathai he stated:  

“We acknowledge that gaps exist on climate adaptation in the rural communities and those can be smartly bridged with the use of digital smart agriculture and climate innovations to create great conservation impact in our region.”

The forum brought together stakeholders from ministries of agriculture, related government agencies, public research institutions, farmer organizations, universities and non-profit organizations working on climate adaptation for food security in Eastern Africa. These included participants from Djibouti, Eritrea, South Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Mauritius, Tanzania, Seychelles, Sudan, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Kenya.  

About Global Center on Adaptation
The Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) is an international organization which works as a solutions broker to accelerate action and support for adaptation solutions, from the international to the local, in partnership with the public and private sector. Founded in 2018, GCA operates from its headquarters in the largest floating office in the world, located in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. GCA has a worldwide network of regional offices in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire; Dhaka, Bangladesh and Beijing, China.

About the Wangari Maathai Institute, University of Nairobi
The Wangari Maathai Institute (WMI) for peace and environmental studies is a global centre for teaching and research on environmental management, governance, peace and conflicts and the nexus between peace and democracy. The centre was founded in 2009 with the support of the Government of Kenya (GoK), the African Union(AU) and the African Development Bank(AfDB) to celebrate and immortalize the work of the late Nobel Laurete
Prof.Wangari Maathai who was a global champion on environmental conservation and governance. The centre trains future leaders and Champions for environment. The Centre is located in the serene environment in Upper Kabete suburb of Nairobi City.

Two months to the 27th global climate summit (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt, African and other global leaders have rallied in Rotterdam, to highlight the urgency of climate adaptation funding for the continent.

The meetings—co-convened by the President of the African Development Bank Group Dr Akinwumi Adesina, CEO of the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) Professor Patrick Verkooijen, and African Union Commission Chair Mousa Faki Mahamat—was unanimous about the need for concrete action and finance.

Former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and GCA Co-Chair said: “The world has a fever. It burns hotter and higher with every day that passes… Statistics tell us that Africa is where the fever is at its most intense and people at the most vulnerable.”

GCA Co-Chair and Honorary Chairman of Royal DSM Feike Sijbesma spoke about the importance of support from the global private sector. He said 80% of the funding for adaptation needs to come from the private sector in both the developed north and the developing south.

GCA Chief Executive Officer Patrick Verkooijen emphasized the disastrous impacts of climate change hitting all parts of the world. He said it is in Africa, however, that climate shocks will hit the hardest. He said Africa was resolute about its economic advancement and would not stop. “Adaptation in Africa is like climbing a mountain. With all of you here today, we have the dream team that will climb the mountain together.”

Verkooijen added: “The next summit after today is Sharm El-Sheikh, the Africa COP. But success in Egypt will hinge on whether Africa’s needs are met or not. Africa has the commitment and the plan. That plan is the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program (AAA-P). It is Africa-developed and Africa-owned. It was launched by Africa’s leaders, who are here today. It is the vehicle for delivering the Africa Adaptation Initiative.”

Established in 2020 by the GCA and the African Development Bank, the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program lies at the center of climate action on the African continent. Participants acknowledged Verkooijen’s and Adesina’s joint efforts as the driving forces behind the program.

African Union Chairperson, President Macky Sall of Senegal, President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana, who is Chair of the Climate Vulnerable Forum, and President Felix Tshisekedi of the Democratic of the Congo conveyed a unified message: the international community must deliver on its pledge to double adaptation finance and to scale adaptation action for Africa.

President Sall expressed disappointment at the absence of industrialized country leaders at the summit. The African Union Chair said if African leaders could be in Rotterdam in person to discuss such a crucial issue as climate adaptation in Africa, the very least they expected was that their European counterparts—whose countries are among the world’s biggest polluters—would also have been present at the summit.

This sentiment was shared by Presidents Akufo-Addo and Tshisekedi, African Union Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat and UN Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed, among others. Mohammed said: “A bird only flies with two wings, and the representation at this table is lopsided.”

The UN deputy chief added that it was not Africa’s fault that it is in its current position, given that it contributes very little to global carbon emissions. She pondered on what the situation would have been if the roles had been reversed. Mohammed said the COP26 Glasgow pact was at risk of failing if the developed world did not make good on its promises of delivering $100 billion a year for climate action in developing countries.

In his intervention(link is external), Adesina reminded participants that the African continent was warming faster than any other region of the world, as predictions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that the critical global warming levels will be reached much earlier in Africa.

The African Development Bank chief explained that in the face of the deluge, Africa does not have the resources to tackle climate change. He said the continent receives only 3% of global climate financing. He noted that if this trend continued, Africa’s climate financing gap could reach between $100 billion to $127 billion per year through 2030.

Adesina said: “The current climate financing architecture is not meeting the needs of Africa. New estimates by the African Economic Outlook of the African Development Bank show that Africa will need between 1.3 and 1.6 trillion dollars from 2020 to 2030, or $118 billion to $145 billion annually to implement its commitments to the Paris Agreement and its nationally determined contributions.”

The African Development Bank chief said the African Adaptation Acceleration Program’s upstream facility at the GCA had already helped to generate $3 billion of mainstreamed climate adaptation investments by the African Development Bank, from agriculture to energy, transport, water, and sanitation.

Adesina spoke of the African Development Bank’s African Development Fund (ADF), its concessionary lending arm as one of the ways to address the climate financing gap. He said the 16th replenishment of the fund, currently underway, presented a unique opportunity for full financing of the $12.5 billion in financing for the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program.

The African Development Bank chief explained that the African Development Fund had introduced a Climate Action Window that would hopefully mobilize $4 billion to $13 billion for climate adaptation for the Fund’s member countries. “This will be used to support 20 million farmers with access to climate resilient agricultural technologies, access of 20 million farmers and pastoralists to weather-indexed crop insurance, reviving 1 million hectares of degraded land, and provision of renewable energy for about 9.5 million people.

Adesina said commitments by developed countries to provide $100 billion annually in climate finance for developing countries was long overdue. “Africa cannot wait,” he emphasized. “This is the time to support the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program. This is the time to support the ADF 16th replenishment. This is the time to support the Climate Action Window of ADF-16.”

World Trade Organization Director General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala also lent her voice to the clarion call for additional resources for Africa adaptation funding. Speaking about the role of trade in climate adaptation, she said trade policies should be integrated into global climate action as an amplifying force for financing and other climate-related support provided to vulnerable economies.

The summit’s five-point Communique(link is external) highlighted that Africa was at a tipping point. It emphasized that success at COP27 will depend on whether the needs of Africa, the world’s most climate-vulnerable continent, are met with finance flowing into such key country-led adaptation programs as the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program.

GCA Co-Chair Feike Sijbesma said in closing: “Investments in global climate adaptation cooperation are a big opportunity for countries like the Netherlands to share some of our best innovations with those who need them the most. The AAAP will be a crucial vehicle for triggering far greater business investment across Africa into green and resilient solutions. This is a collective effort, we need every sector, every contribution possible to see off the climate crisis in Africa, and the private sector, in particular, has a massive role to play.”