REPORT: Africa Climate Week 2021

Output report. Africa Climate Week 2021. 59 p.

The four-day event held from 26-29 September was hosted by the Government of Uganda and brought together more than 3,400 registered attendees from the region. The thematic session discussions were engaging and will be carried forward to a High-Level Side Event at COP26. 

The ACW 2021 thematic sessions were held online. 3,400+ registered from 137 countries • 2,300+ participants who joined • 190 speakers from 49 countries • 146 events in the program, including: o 62 Side Events o 13 Affiliate Events o 27 Action Hub Videos.

Recommendations related to agriculture and food security in Africa:

• Compilation and analyses of knowledge and make them accessible to farmers and all stakeholders and users.  
• More efforts are needed in the area of skills enhancement, formal education through partnership with research and academia, and informal education through farmer field schools, including gender-based approaches and support. 
• Urban and peri-urban agriculture, such as small-holder farmers, community or household gardens and farms, are suitable strategies to support climate mitigation and adaptation in cities and promote food security to vulnerable urban populations in a changing environment. 
• A circular economy approach to agriculture also helps with food waste reduction.
• Adoption and support for agroecology and regenerative practices is critical for the restoration of degraded lands, to support biodiversity and build climate resilience.
• Using digital technology in Africa to support urban agricultural systems, create markets for small-holder farmers, and offer fresh, sustainably produced food to consumers. 
• Approaches and practices for climate-smart agriculture (CSA) and nature-based solutions (NBS) across the whole value chain from land to markets/consumers exist already and are bearing results, but we need to scale them up in the continent. 
• Need to build synergies, strengthen coordination among regional pan-African initiatives and institutions working to scale up CSA and NBS and avoid duplication of efforts. o Organizations include Africa CSA Alliance, The Water Scarcity Initiative in the NENA region, the One Health platforms, AFR100 and Africa’s Great Green Wall. o Globally, the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021-2030) and UN decade of Family Farming (2019-2028) pave the way for support to NBS across all terrestrial and marine ecosystems in the region.
• The private sector, including SMEs, also play a key role not only in terms of financing climate projects and developing innovative products, services and technologies but also in climate-proofing business operations and supply chains, particularly in the agriculture sector.
• For agriculture, Artificial Intelligence for Climate Action in Africa (AI)-based system for yield prediction and plant management can help to increase climate-friendly and climate-resilient agricultural production.

On the occasion of the African Climate Week, FAO and various African municipalities discussed howthe integrated approach of Forestry, Agriculture and Food at the urban level can speed progress to increase cities’ resilience and well-being of dwellers. This is the goal of the FAO Green Cities Initiative. 

The EU’s support for national climate action in Uganda, and throughout Africa through the GCCA+ flagship initiative, highlighted its commitment to partnering for whole society engagement in implementation and managing climate risks in achieving national and regional climate commitments made at the global level.

Related: REPORT: The State of the Climate in Africa 2020 44 p.

See some of the most outstanding climate crisis negative consequences for Africa, as cited by this major multi-organisation report: elaborated by World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the African Union Commission, the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) through the Africa Climate Policy Centre (ACPC), UN agencies, and international and regional scientific organisations.

"Africa home to over 1.300 billion inhabitants in 52 countries, bears the heaviest brunt of 80 percent of the climate crisis destructive impacts."

Related: : Boehm, S., et all. 2021. State of Climate Action 2021: Systems Transformations Required to LimitGlobal Warming to 1.5°C. Washington, DC: World Resources Institute: 790 p.

Transformations must occur across every sector at far faster pace than recent trends to keep the window open to achieve the Paris Agreement’s goal to limit global warming to 1.5°C, according to this Systems Change Lab report authored by the UN High-Level Climate Champions, Climate Action Tracker, ClimateWorks Foundation, Bezos Earth Fund and World Resources Institute.

Recommendations related to agriculture and food security in Africa:
For agriculture general, see: Chapter 9

• Crop yields per hectare need to increase by 18 percent by 2030 and 45 percent by 2050 to avoid further cropland expansion, necessitating a near-doubling of the recent rate of yield growth—even as climate impacts intensify. Yet recent global yield growth masks wide variation among regions, and yields in sub-Saharan Africa remain very low, warranting particular attention. 
• In sub-Saharan Africa where climate change without adaptation is expected to significantly depress yields.
• Soil degradation, particularly in the drylands of sub-Saharan Africa, can keep yields low and threaten food security. Approaches such as agroforestry (integrating trees and shrubs on farmland), rainwater harvesting (practices that block water runoff), and “microdosing” of fertilizer can help increase soil fertility and moisture, boosting yields and increasing resilience to climate change while keeping input costs low. 
• More research is needed to systematically understand the full range of conditions under which agroforestry systems are successful, in order to scale up their adoption. 
• An extreme in terms of the structure in the energy demand in buildings is sub-Saharan Africa, where many people today rely on traditional biomass for cooking and heating, implying a huge suppressed demand for electricity.
• Emissions reductions would be required across all world regions and all emissions sources relative to 2017 but would be less stringent in regions with high projected population and food demand growth, such as sub-Saharan Africa. Both supply-side (e.g., improvements in livestock feed and manure management, improvements in nitrogen use efficiency, improvements in rice management and breeds) and demand-side (e.g., reductions in food loss and waste and dietary shifts) actions are important to achieve the necessary level of emissions reductions.