AAAP in the Media
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Staple Crops Processing Zone (SCPZ): funding proposal to the Green Climate Fund
The target countries of Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Togo and Zambia are regions experiencing high deforestation, poor agriculture yield and increasing poverty exacerbated by climate change. Across all four countries, climate variability and change has become a major threat to sustainable development.
As part of efforts to address these challenges, the four countries are implementing national projects to establish Staple Crops Processing Zones: initiatives designed to concentrate agro-processing activities within areas of high agricultural potential to boost productivity and integrate production, processing and marketing of selected commodities. These initiatives are purposely built shared facilities, to enable agricultural producers, processors, aggregators and distributors to operate in the same vicinity to reduce transaction costs and share business development services for increased productivity and competitiveness.
Developing adequate infrastructure (energy, water, roads, ICT) in rural areas of high agricultural potential should attract investments from private agro-industrialists/entrepreneurs to contribute to the economic and social development of rural areas.
The Staple Crops Processing Zone (SCPZ) development program aims to transform agriculture production in regions experiencing high deforestation, poor agriculture yield and increasing poverty exacerbated by climate change, including the target countries of Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Togo and Zambia.
The specific objectives of SCPZ are: (i) improving access to seed capital through grants and matching grants; (ii) supporting productivity enhancement through introduction of new technologies and agricultural inputs; (iii) improving access to infrastructure by supporting investment; (iv) improving the capacity of producer cooperative through training and TA, especially for targeted women and youth groups; (v) facilitating market linkages throughout-growers’ schemes; and (vi) facilitating on-farm value addition by targeting limited value chains and linking farmers to the supply chain.
GCF financing is sought to strengthen one of the project components of SCPZ in Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Togo and Zambia.
- Through the technical assistance program, AAAPwill accelerate the mobilization of adaptation finance.
- Increased carbon sinks in soil and above-ground biomass
- Reduced carbon dioxide/other greenhouse gas emissions from farms due to efficient energy use
- Increased renewable energy production from biomass, either as a substitute for fossil fuels or as a replacement for burning of fuel wood or crop residues
- Fewer incidents of bare soils, reduced soil erosion and increased water percolation.
- Reduced emissions through low-emission energy access and power generation
- Reduced emissions due to improved waste management, including by recycling waste and use of waste in biogas systems
- Reduction of emissions from land use and deforestation, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.
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Increased resilience, including to extreme events such as droughts and floods, and enhanced livelihood of about 55% of highly vulnerable people and communities
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Increased access to better health and wellbeing, and food and water security to over 100,000 beneficiaries, in addition to provision of alternative sources of energy
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Increased resilience of ecosystems and ecosystem services in forests and savannas
USD 427 million:
- Funding proposal to GCF seeking USD 174.02 million (USD 130.02 million grant and USD 44 million loan)
- AfDB providing USD 111.2 million (USD 85.2 million loan and USD 26 million grant)
- Co-financiers:
European Union, USD 10.4 million (grant)
BOAD, USD 17.6 million (loan)
Korea Exim Bank, USD 50 million (loan)
Korea Fund, USD 5 million (grant)
Islamic Development Bank, USD 31 million (loan)
Governments of target countries, USD 28 million (counterpart financing)
Global Center on Adaptation, AfDB host regional forum on the future of resilient food systems in Africa
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.
Ethiopia: African Development Fund approves $13.95 million grant for Borana Resilient Water Development for Improved livelihoods program
The Board of Directors of the African Development Fund has approved a $13.95 million grant to the Government of Ethiopia to implement the first phase of a livelihood improvement project for pastoralist communities in Ethiopia’s drylands.
The Borana Resilient Water Development for Improved Livelihoods Program will enhance access to climate-resilient, gender-sensitive integrated and sustainable water and sanitation services. Phase one of the program will focus on developing well-field infrastructure and a transmission pipeline to a storage tank.
The Global Center on Adaptation (GCA) will contribute €300,000 to the program to strengthen adaptation and resilience, under the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program, a partnership with the African Development Bank.
GCA will provide technical assistance for the development of an in-depth understanding of climate related risks to improve the climate resilience of the catchments. It will also design a strategy and approach to involve local communities, and carry out a gender climate vulnerability and resilience assessment as an integral part of climate adaptation.
The scheme will bolster access to water supplies in Elweya, Dubluk, and Yabel districts, covering 62 rural villages and 12 towns with an estimated population of 308,576 people—half of them women – and 975,750 livestock.
Osward Chanda, Director of Water Development and Sanitation at the African Development Bank, said: “The Bank’s support is a coordinated response with the Government of Ethiopia to mitigate water, sanitation and climate challenges, develop sustainable water structures, and improve socioeconomic outcomes in Borana.”
Phase one of the program will be implemented over four years. The Borana Resilient Water Development for Improved Livelihoods Program will lead to improved health outcomes, nutrition and food security.
In the last 15 years, Ethiopia has suffered eight major droughts with adverse consequences for its economy and the livelihoods of its people, resulting in forced migration and displacement of humans and livestock. Droughts in the Borana area have been linked to increased violent conflict and boundary disputes, and unsafe drinking water, and inadequate sanitation, which remain critical health concerns in the Ethiopian lowlands.
The Borana program aligns with the Bank’s Strategy for Addressing Fragility and Building Resilience in Africa as well as its Gender Strategy, Jobs for Youth in Africa Strategy, Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Action Plan, and the Bank’s Climate Change Policy which seeks to invest in programs which boost climate resilience and adaptation.
Contact:
Olufemi Terry, Département de la communication et des relations extérieures, medias@afdb.org(link sends e-mail)
Ethiopia Wheat Value Chain Development Project (EWVCDP)
The wheat demand gap in Ethiopia is 0.6 million MT per year and is growing. As a result, the country is faced with a huge import bill estimated to be USD 540 million annually to satisfy the local demand for wheat. In addition, wheat productivity is only at 3.0 MT/ha. Increasing wheat production is a core part of Ethiopia’s Ten-Year Development Plan (2021-2030) to accelerate economic progress and ensure national food security.
To achieve self-sufficiency and be a net exporter by 2025/26, the Government of Ethiopia launched the National Wheat Flagship Program (NWFP) for wheat self-sufficiency and import substitution, a program to expand and promote irrigated wheat production on a total area of one million Ha in 2022/23 season and expand it by 5-10% annually. To support achieve this target, the African Development Bank financed the Ethiopia Wheat Value Chain Development Project (EWVCDP) to contribute to meeting Ethiopia’s wheat demands, sustain the import substitution goal and produce surplus for export.
The objective is to improve production and productivity of wheat in Ethiopia with the aim of promoting national wheat self-sufficiency, regional trade, and exports, at the same time, increase incomes and improved livelihoods for wheat value-chain actors.
- Conduct a suitability analysis to assess local climatic conditions and food security, the structure of the local economy and access to resources, and to identify parts of the country that are performing below potential in terms of agricultural productivity
- Using a hybrid of climate risk assessment tools to generate micro-region climate risk maps and information to highlight local enabling conditions for particular interventions to accelerate adaptation in agriculture
- Facilitate the production of a feasibility and blueprint of the integration of digital adaptation solutions
- Integrate digital climate adaptation solutions in the wheat farmer registration system
- Support capacity building of extension agents and stakeholders to deploy digital climate advisory services and digital adaptation solutions in the delivery and implementation of agricultural extension services
- Facilitate access to farm inputs (seeds and fertiliser)
- Improve the efficiency of existing irrigation schemes through rehabilitation and maintenance of infrastructure –desilting, drainage, extend canals
- Strengthened and established full package mechanization service centres in the wheat growing areas
- Delivered extension and advisory services to farmers on agricultural practices (soil, crop and water management packages, disease and pest management and post-harvest handling)
- Increased wheat production through mechanisation, extension and advisory services
- Enabled market linkages, Agri-Finance and private investments
- Rehabilitated and expanded Irrigation Infrastructure by increasing the efficiency of existing irrigation schemes
AfDB Investment USD 54 million
Total of USD 94.30 Million
Building resilience for food and nutrition security in the Horn of Africa (BREFONS)
The target countries of this project (Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sudan) are located in the arid and semi-arid lands, which comprise more than 70% of the Horn of Africa (HOA) region, receive less than 600 mm of annual rainfall and are characterized by recurrent droughts and unpredictable rainfall patterns.
Despite the region’s considerable range of natural resources, with their huge potential for wealth and progress, the HOA countries are struggling to cope with their worsening ecological circumstances. Droughts are increasing in severity and frequency and their impacts are exacerbated by advancing desertification, land degradation, global warming, and climate change. These circumstances have created chronic vulnerability in the HOA, with persistent food insecurity, widespread economic hardships, conflicts, and migration. The strategic priorities of countries in the HOA are defined by their urgent need to build resilience to environmental and socio-economic shocks, through investing in sustainable development and optimizing the productivity of their resources.
Through building resilience to climate change, the overall objective of this program is to increasing, on a sustainable and resilient basis, productivity and agro-sylvo-pastoral production in the HOA, increase incomes from agro-sylvo-pastoral value chains and enhance the adaptive capacity of the populations to prepare for and manage climate change risks.
- Provide upstream technical assistance to ensure climate smart digital technologies for adaptation and resilience are integrated into the project.
- Identifying key agriculture adaptation constraints that can be addressed by digital technologies and develop solutions
- Assessing the conditions and opportunities for digital applications for drought index insurance
- Identifying opportunities for digital agricultural adaptation solutions through the preparing of climate risk and digital agriculture profiles
- Supporting stakeholders to identify and implement opportunities through the preparation of a digital agricultural adaptation toolkit
- Building the capacity of policymakers and enable policy interventions to ensure uptake of digital solutions using the toolkit.
- Feasibility studies and assessment on building resilience for food security in Africa;
- Feasibility studies to assess integration of adaptation and mitigation measures for the sustainability of nutrition and food security interventions;
- Quality assurance and advisory services for results and evidence-based planning, management and M&E of the Youth Enterprise Development project interventions
The programme will contribute to improving living conditions, including for women and the youth; improving food and nutrition security; increasing resilience; and peace and security in the HOA. Specifically it will:
- Productivity (crops and livestock) increased by 30%
- 50% increase in digital literacy for actors across value chains, of which 80% are women and youth
- 30% de-risked credit as a result of use of Digital Climate Advisory Services and Digital Financial Services
- 30% increase in use of index insurance products by smallholders across target value chains
- 55,000 additional jobs created (primarily for women and youth)
- 1.3 million farmers and pastoralists in the six countries use climate services (e.g. index insurance with a gender focus), allowing them to benefit from:
- Increased productivity and agro-sylvo-pastoral production in the Horn of Africa, on a sustainable and resilient basis
- Increased incomes (by 40%) from agro-sylvo-pastoral value chains
- More broadly, the population of the Horn of Africa have enhanced adaptive capacity to better prepare for and manage climate change risks and variation.
USD 210 million
Ethiopia - Borana Resilient Water Development for Improved Livelihoods Program (Phase 1)
Ethiopia, with an estimated population of 120.8 million, is Africa’s second most populous country and the third-largest economy in Eastern and Southern Africa. Persistent water scarcity, lack of access to basic infrastructure, and limited adaptability of agro pastoral systems to climate shocks are constraints to resilient livelihoods, which will require specific attention in the context of recovery from the COVID-19 crisis. The country is endowed with abundant water resources (both ground-and surface-water). However, the spatial and temporal (within and between years) distribution of this resource is exceptionally variable and unpredictable, which is manifested in endemic, devastating droughts and floods.
The objective is to improve access to climate resilient and gender sensitive integrated and sustainable water and sanitation services to pastoralist communities in dryland areas of the Borana area of Oromia region, for improved health, livelihoods, and nutrition and food security.
- Conduct climate risk screening of the infrastructure project at design and at operation and maintenance stages
- Build resilience into infrastructure projects, prioritizing nature-based solutions, where feasible
- Design a strategy and approach to involve local communities, tapping into local knowledge and traditional arrangements for water resources management
- Carry out a gender climate vulnerability and resilience assessment and develop measures to address these gender gaps as an integral part of climate adaptation
- Benefit an estimated 308,576 people and 975,750 livestock
- Provide access to integrated, sustainable, climate-resilient and gender-sensitive water and sanitation services to pastoralist communities in the drylands of the Borana region of Oromia
- Enhance adaptation and resilience building measures such as protection and restoration of ecosystem functions, improving access to potable water, and watershed management
- Improve access to clean water and sanitation services
- Enhance water resources management
- Increase gender equality and women economic empowerment
- Improve national infrastructure and Feed Africa priority with a target on increasing agricultural productivity
- Increased job opportunities
- Integrated and sustainable water resources management (WRM), through assessment of the resource and its ecosystems, as well as supporting institutions and enabling environment
- Strengthen delivery of resilient water supply, sanitation, and hygiene services
- Increased the availability of sustainable water resources for food production and improved nutrition, including improved agropastoral water management investments
AfDB investment of 14.1 million of total of USD 36.1 million