Hosted by CGIAR’s Executive Managing Director, Ismahane Elouafi, along with the Director General of the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT, Juan Lucas Restrepo, guests included Qu Dongyu, Director-General of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO); Alvaro Lario, President of the International Fund of Agricultural Development (IFAD) and Cindy McCain, Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP). Moderating the session was Marcel Beukeboom, Permanent Representative of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the United Nations Organisations.
"The potential is greater than ever. for innovations aimed at those in need. There is a need to focus on the crops and needs of those living in the greatest poverty, particularly where helping out farmers is thought to be the highest priority to minimize the effects of climate change.” Mr. Gates
“When humanity has faced its greatest challenges in the past — whether from famine or pandemic — collaboration and innovation provided solutions. Today’s challenges are so large and complex that no one organization or discipline can solve them alone. But I sincerely believe that the four multilateral organizations represented here today can — with the support of partners such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and governments of those represented around the table — go a long way towards solving the big challenges of our era: hunger, malnutrition, climate change.” Dr. Elouafi
Related: African Development Bank Group and research centres to transform African agriculture and improve food security
With 65% of global uncultivated arable land, the African Development Bank believes that the continent can feed itself and the rest of the world.
The meeting was the first coordinated group visit by the four directors-general/regional directors and one deputy director general of CGIAR for Africa to a financing partner and came two days after Dr Adesina hosted a visit from United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken, during which the head of US diplomacy praised the bank for the exceptional efforts it is undertaking to help Africa feed itself and the rest of the world.
The leaders focused on securing long-term financing for research activities and for CGIAR to enhance its effectiveness across the continent. They also discussed capacity building for country-based national agricultural research services partners, young scientists and extension workers, and private-sector seed growers to produce certified seeds.
The CGIAR Initiative on Climate Resilience (ClimBeR) has been using simple but powerful business tools to generate the financing African governments need to take agriculture innovations to scale. The project focuses on transformative adaptation in agricultural systems to address climate risk in six countries: Guatemala, Kenya, Morocco, the Philippines, Senegal, and Zambia.
The leaders focused on securing long-term financing for research activities and for CGIAR to enhance its effectiveness across the continent. They also discussed capacity building for country-based national agricultural research services partners, young scientists and extension workers, and private-sector seed growers to produce certified seeds.
Related: The CGIAR Initiative on Climate Resilience (ClimBeR)
The CGIAR Initiative on Climate Resilience (ClimBeR) has been using simple but powerful business tools to generate the financing African governments need to take agriculture innovations to scale. The project focuses on transformative adaptation in agricultural systems to address climate risk in six countries: Guatemala, Kenya, Morocco, the Philippines, Senegal, and Zambia.
ClimBeR helps African governments access $30m earmarked for climate adaptation by leveraging climate-smart agriculture investment plans, identifying specific business models and projects that would help mitigate climate risk and promote adaptation within a country’s agricultural value chains.
ClimBeR builds detailed investment cases and implementation plans for these projects, which can then be used to attract sustainable investment from both the public and private sectors. Such investment is crucial to expanding access to tools and technologies with the potential to make farmers more resilient to rising temperatures.
ClimBeR builds detailed investment cases and implementation plans for these projects, which can then be used to attract sustainable investment from both the public and private sectors. Such investment is crucial to expanding access to tools and technologies with the potential to make farmers more resilient to rising temperatures.
- An example of one such project or investment is hermetic bags for long-term grain storage identified in the investment plan for Kenya, a simple business idea that, with further investment, would decrease post-harvest loss, provide a more stable food supply, and even help farmers leverage their stored grain to access finance. Creating an investment package for hermetic bags turns the idea into more than just a government project or humanitarian activity; it becomes a business that banks or private sector companies can invest in, which makes it more sustainable in the long run.
- In partnership with Lend XS, ECLOF bank in Kenya and Agora Microfinance in Zambia, CGIAR is also developing a climate credit scoring tool, which aims to evaluate the climate hazards and adaptive capacity of farmers, both for the dairy sector and for the maize mixed systems. This allows financial institutions to better evaluate the risks of agricultural loans, ultimately giving better-adapted farmers more access to finance. Innovative financial tools like these should incentivise farmers to adopt climate-smart practices, while giving lenders the information they need to assess credit risk in a widely misunderstood sector.
- 4 to 10 December 2023 Nurturing Agricultural Resilience: Crop Modelling and Climate Strategies Unveiled at Senegal Workshop Underpinning this collaborative effort is a tapestry of funding sources. The Flemish Government contributes through the ‘StratAdapt-Mali’ project, while two CGIAR project initiatives—AICCRA (Accelerating the Impact of Climate Research for Africa) and ClimBeR (Building Systemic Resilience Against Climate Variability and Extremes)—play a pivotal role in supporting the workshop.
No comments:
Post a Comment