EiA: Scaling climate-resilient and resource efficient farming systems in Africa
The CGIAR Excellence in Agronomy (EiA) initiative, working to synchronize partner organizations’ efforts for promoting agronomic technologies in Africa, hosted a side event on 6 June, during the 8th Africa Agribusiness and Science Week organized by Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA). The event aimed to establish a strong foundation to drive the design, implementation, and adoption of agronomic technologies in Africa, and to strengthen existing frameworks and connections.
The Initiative Lead and Interim Director General of IITA, Bernard Vanlauwe said, “Today, I’m really happy to be here leading the Excellence in Agronomy because I’m convinced we are now doing the right type of agronomy, using the right tools, and we have the right partnerships in place to deliver consumer results.”
Cross section of panelists during the EiA side event.
This initiative is committed to fostering climate change adaptations through advancement in soil health, yield, water-use efficiency, and nutrient-use efficiency, using the Agronomic Gain Delivery action plan.
The side event was designed to spark discussions around answering this pertinent question – ‘After more than 50 years of huge investments in agricultural research, why is it that a lot of the solutions developed by scientists and experts are not getting to farmers?’
Lulseged Desta, Director for Multifunctional Landscape at Alliance for Bioversity and CIAT, presented the Digital Green Use Case, an existing agronomic solution designed to improve Africa’s yield through advisory services to farmers.
According to Desta, it comprises a digital tool that proposes fertilizer quantity, use, and application that are context and location specific. The Digital Green tool provides information on onset of rain, best planting time, how much fertilizer input to apply, and when it should be applied. The team has recorded success as farmers’ testify of increased yield and more profit due to application of their location-specific fertilizer advisory service.
“The Ministry of Agriculture in Ethiopia has adopted the Digital Green advisory service to scale to more farmers through the Ministry’s extension agents”, said Desta.
Vanlauwe commended all the partners working with the EiA initiative – FARA, Centre for Coordination of Agricultural Research and Development for Southern Africa (CCARDESA), West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF), African Forum for Agricultural Advisory Services (AFAAS), Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in Eastern and Central Africa (ASARECA), and Southern African Development Community (SADC).
The session allowed the panelists to field questions from the audience; this provided an opportunity for experience sharing during the discussions.
In conclusion, participants established that the ideal toolkit to adequately deliver climate-sensitive advisory service to help smallholder farmers become resource efficient should include reliable information, right partnerships, assemble incentives that are useful to farmers, focused delivery with clear results that farmers can respond and relate to.
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