Smallholders have begun to take advantage of a growing pool of investment in climate change mitigation. Meanwhile, early movers in this area are working to develop innovative models that will allow projects to be financially sustainable and scalable while benefiting local actors. This study focuses on two of these projects in East Africa, managed by Vi Agroforestry in Kenya and ECOTRUST in Uganda. They engaged in a participatory action research process to identify ways that local actors could take on expanded roles within the projects
Research-based evidence on the adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices is vital to their effective uptake, continued use and wider diffusion. In addition, an enabling policy environment at the national and regional levels is necessary for this evidence to be used effectively. This chapter analyzes a 4-year period of continuous policy engagement in East Africa in an attempt to understand the role of multi-stakeholder platforms (MSPs) in facilitating an enabling policy environment for climate change adaptation and mitigation.
Agriculture is an essential component of food security, sustainable livelihoods, and economic development in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Smallholder farmers, however, are restricted in the number of crops they can grow due to small plot sizes. Agriculture inputs, such as fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides, and improved seed varieties, could prove to be useful resources to improve yield. Despite the potential of these agriculture technologies, input use throughout much of SSA remains low.
While education access has improved globally, gains are uneven, and development impacts driven by increases in education continue to be left on the table, especially in rural areas. Demand-driven extension and advisory services (EAS) – as a key institution educating rural people while providing agricultural advice and supplying inputs – have a critical role to play in bridging the education gap. This can help ensure that millions of young people successfully capitalise on opportunities in agriculture markets, as surveys in Rwanda and Uganda demonstrate.
Conventional approaches to agricultural extension based on top–down technology transfer and information dissemination models are inadequate to help smallholder farmers tackle increasingly complex agroclimatic adversities. Innovative service delivery alternatives, such as field schools, exist but are mostly implemented in isolationistic silos with little effort to integrate them for cost reduction and greater technical effectiveness.
The slow rate of agricultural development in Africa can largely be blamed on lack of functional relationships between technology/innovation generation centers, local farming communities, financial institutions and markets. The result has been low penetration of promising innovations/technologies thus, low adoption levels and/ or partial adoption; and limited or no access to markets and financial services by farmers. In general, most of the innovation/technologies developed have not been extensively out-scaled; some of which are not even packaged in user friendly formats.
Seed is the starting point of plant life, and hence the most fundamental input of agriculture. A seed system that assures the availability of the desired quality of seed to the producer at the right time is indispensable for his farming enterprise. In the case of the potato crop, the seed most commonly used is strictly speaking no seed, but a tuber. The constraints and opportunities in seed potato systems in East Africa are of a combined social, economic and technical nature.
This methodological guide was initially developed and used in Latin America and the Caribbean-LAC (Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Dominican Republic), and was later improved during adaptation and use in eastern African (Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia) through a South-South exchange of expertise and experiences. The aim of the methodological guide is to constitute an initial step in the empowerment of local communities to develop a local soil quality monitoring and decision-making system for better management of soil resources.
This book examines how agricultural innovation arises in four African countries – Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda – through the lens of agribusiness, public policies, and specific value chains for food staples, high value products, and livestock. Determinants of innovation are not viewed individually but within the context of a complex agricultural innovation system involving many actors and interactions.
The paper discusses the work force development (Wfd) tool that places explicit focus on three functional dimensions of Wfd policies and institutions: (a) strategy; (b) system oversight; and (c) service delivery. Strategy refers to the alignment between workforce development and a country’s national goals for economic and social development. System oversight refers to the governance arrangements that shape the behaviors key stakeholders involved, including individuals, employers, and training providers.