Executive Summary
Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) is deemed a vital approach to fostering increased food production, building climate resilience, and mitigating emissions associated with farming. CSA has been adopted far and wide in Africa in response to climate variability, increased food shortage, famine, droughts and insect outbreaks. Despite its growing momentum, concerns have emerged as to whether CSA is, in reality, is capable of building the resilience of agri-food systems. Moreover, the extent to which CSA can mitigate agricultural Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions is a discourse with no consensus. To enable an understanding of the adaptation and mitigation concerns of CSA from an African perspective a series of discussions were initiated. The policy brief is based on multi-stakeholder virtual discussions held in March 2022, hosted by Enviro Wild Initiative and Kenya Lawyers café. Consequently, the policy brief addresses CSA issues, including farmers’ needs, research gaps, and CSA controversies and challenges. It was established that policies aimed at directing and guiding CSA practices in Africa are still in their infancy, evolving and fragmented and that CSA transformed agri-food systems towards better resilience and productivity in some communities while presenting complexities in others. It is recommended that CSA promoters to embrace research-based and data-driven CSA implementation.
Authors:
Caroline J. Kibii
Samuel Weniga Anuga
Read the full discussion brief here.
