New fund initiative hailed as an innovative climate solution at One Planet Summit

The ‘Land Degradation Neutrality Fund’ initiative promoted by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and Mirova (Natixis) to support sustainable land use practices globally is highlighted as a concrete and innovative climate action during the One Planet Summit.

Initial investors, including the European Investment Bank and the Agence Française de Développement, have announced financial commitments totalling more than USD 100 million out of a target of USD 300 million.

At the One Planet Summit, organized to celebrate the second anniversary of the Paris Agreement, the ‘Land Degradation Neutrality Fund’ initiative is hailed by Jean-Yves Le Drian, French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, as an innovative solution that aligns sustainable land management with the ambition of the Paris Agreement.

“The public sector must be bold and inventive to unleash a revolution in development and entrepreneurship that can tackle the manifold and complex challenges before us – climate change, loss of productive land, lack of jobs, forced migration, droughts, floods, the list seems endless. The moment we see the land differently our horizons open wide. Then, the options and possibilities are endless,” says Monique Barbut, Executive Secretary of the UNCCD.

Developed by the UNCCD and Mirova, an affiliate of Natixis Investment Managers who also provided initial seeding for the Fund, it is one of the responses to the call for public and private finance in support of global climate action.

Restoring degraded land is a huge, yet greatly underestimated and underutilized opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to climate change. By putting sustainable land use at the heart of its climate action, the ‘Land Degradation Neutrality Fund’ initiative addresses the three summit objectives:

1. Act concretely and collectively: This joint effort to put finance at the service of climate action is the outcome of a unique coalition of actors. It will invest in sustainable land management practices all over the world that have already been shown to be effective, but need suitable financing and technical assistance.
2. Innovate: This will be the first investment vehicle to focus on a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target, and using an innovative public private partnership structure. Success could motivate the development of new investment vehicles for the goals.
3. Support one another: Climate change is a global issue, but the effects are distributed unevenly, with especially negative impacts on land users. Acting on a global scale, this investment vehicle will therefore provide flexible financing solutions where traditional bank funding is not available.

As early supporter of the fund, all the way through the design and structuring phases, the European Investment Bank was joined by the Agence Française de Développement to become the anchor investors.

Other institutional investors include Fondaction, the first north-American private investor, foundation Fondation de France, insurance companies BNP Paribas Cardif and Garance.

The initiative is also backed by de-risking partners including the Government of Luxembourg, IDB Invest and the Global Environment Facility. In total, investors have announced commitments of over USD 100 million out of a target of USD 300 million.

Researchers and policymakers meet to discuss cassava agronomy

Scientists across Africa and their colleagues in other parts of the world are meeting with policymakers in Tanzania under the auspices of the African Agronomy Initiative (ACAI) to discuss the progress made in the last two years in providing clues to the agronomy of cassava.

The meeting, holding December 11-15, is set to review the progress made by the ACAI—a project managed by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture— and plan for the year ahead.

Addressing participants at the meeting, the Permanent Secretary, Tanzanian Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries, expressed optimism that the ACAI project would provide solutions to some of the problems faced by cassava farmers in Tanzania and sub-Saharan Africa.

The Permanent Secretary was represented by Dr Geophrey Kajiru, Assistant Director, Research and Development.

The Tanzanian meeting, which is taking place in Mwanza, will also include a planning workshop for the ACAI 2018 project activities in line with the implementation strategy for year 3 of the project. The meeting is thus organized for planning and setting new goals for the 2018 activities, sharing roles, and understanding the expectations of each party represented in the project.

The event is earmarked to set pace for transitioning into the validation and the onset of dissemination stage of the Decision Support Tools (DSTs).

Dr Bernard Vanlauwe, Director for Central Africa Hub with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), said ACAI would tap into new opportunities and partnerships to ensure sustainability of the project and use of the tools developed.

Through extensive research working with development partners, ACAI has developed the initial version of the decision support tools that will be showcased at the meeting. This will provide an opportunity for the partners to examine the tools and offer feedback on how the prototype DSTs can be improved. ACAI DSTs are developed based on demand and needs identified by development partners actively engaged in cassava value chain.

ACAI’s Senior Systems Agronomist, Dr Pieter Pypers said the interaction among project partners would generate concrete ideas that would be incorporated into the development of the DSTs to make them more useful and user friendly.

“The tools we have developed must meet the needs of the development partners, that is why we are planning for the partners to have a practical feel of the tools in Mwanza and share with us their expectations of the tools,” Dr Pypers added.

Project team members are making presentations on the progress of the work under their specific roles in the project. ACAI is structured in workstreams that inform the project’s critical path through research, development, to the use and dissemination of the final project tools.

Dr Geoffrey Mkamilo, the National Coordinator for Root and Tuber Crops, Agricultural Research Institute (ARI) in Tanzania said the project had made significant gains in 2017 in research especially in meeting the high demand data in ACAI.

“The trials have performed very well, especially when you look at cassava response to fertilizer in the field, we are looking to hear about updates from other project sites,” Dr Adeyemi Olojede, ACAI coordinator at the National Root Crops Research Institute (NRCRI), Umudike said.

The project has achieved significant milestones in 2017, a trend that the core team and partners will be seeking to further in the new season.

The meeting in Tanzania has more than 60 participants representing at least 21 organizations partnering with ACAI in Nigeria and Tanzania.

Forests can be a third of the climate solution, but international support does not add up

A STATEMENT FROM 13 ENVIRONMENTAL NGOS:

Forests are a critically underfunded climate solution. 

Keeping forests standing and restoring those which have been lost and degraded, could absorb up to 5.5 billion tons of carbon pollution each year, as much as 80% of direct emissions from the world’s transport sector. Forest and land-use could contribute 30% of the climate mitigation needed to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. Yet, forests receive only a fraction -2% - of international development finance to mitigate climate change.

More funds are needed to protect and restore forests, as well as to revert the widespread tropical forest degradation. An estimated $200 billion per year is required for a global transformation to deforestation-free agriculture. According to the Tropical Forest Alliance 2020, approximately $50-100 billion annually could be invested in sustainable agricultural intensification, restoration of degraded lands and livestock management. Countries also need support to strengthen their institutions, policies and forest governance.

It is essential to shift existing finance toward sustainable land use. Over $777 billion has been spent on agriculture and land-intensive development since 2010, in the form of investments and subsidies from governments, the private sector and international donors. This number dwarfs finance in support of forests: $2.7 billion investment in green commodities, or $8.1 billion in international public finance to support countries that seek to reduce tropical deforestation. To stop the loss of forest protection has to be factored into agricultural, infrastructure, and other investments. Redirecting finance toward sustainable land use promotes healthier and more productive landscapes in producer countries while reducing deforestation.

Redirecting existing financial flows could be achieved with the targeted and strategic use of public funds. A public-private dialogue that helps to redirect subsidies and supports deforestation-free commodities could help deploy finance strategically with the goal of leveraging private investments. New financial instruments could help to support farmers, de-risk investments and promote integrated landscape investments that combine an increase in agricultural productivity with the protection of forests and other ecosystems.

There is wide societal support for the protection of forests, but more needs to be done. The nearly 200 companies, governments, civil society organizations and indigenous peoples’ groups that have endorsed the New York Declaration on Forests (NYDF), which aims to halt global forest loss by 2030, provide a starting point for further mobilization and the proposed dialogue.

We call on the One Planet Summit to publicly elevate the importance of forests as a climate solution and agree on a concrete plan to mobilize green finance for a sustainable and inclusive transition to a deforestation-free economy.

African countries not dependent on donor support for climate adaptation - study

African countries are already spending up to 20 percent of their total needs presently on climate adaptation, which is more than their fair share without any support from the international community, a new study by the United Nations has revealed.
 

Early findings from the study jointly commissioned by the UNDP Regional Office for Africa, and the African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC) at the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) to review African commitment to adaptation has therefore dismissed the insinuation that African countries are not investing in their own climate adaptation responses and are instead waiting on the international community as recipients of support.

“African countries are already spending between 2 to 9 percent of their Gross Domestic Product on adaptation, thus reducing the potential impact of climate change by more than 20 percent,” Dr Johnson Nkem, a Senior Climate Adaptation expert at the ACPC told PAMACC News at the ongoing climate negotiations in Bonn, Germany.

The UN study is being implemented by two United Kingdom centres; Climate Scrutiny and Mokoro, to provide estimates of Africa’s public expenditure on adaptation as a proportion of the total cost for adaptation.

Although the level of investment as a proportion of GDP expenditure varies among countries, it ranges between 2-9 percent of GDP; and represents more than other forms of expenditure in public services such as healthcare and education.

“This contribution is significantly higher than the adaptation resource flow from international sources,” said Nkem.

The study therefore recommends that the disproportionate share of investment in adaptation as opposed to its smallest share of contribution to the global Green House Gas (GHG) emissions, needs to be fully recognised and boosted under global financing mechanism for climate response, especially under the implementation of the nationally determined contributions (NDCs).

Some of the study’s key findings are that, African countries are already making a major contribution to adaptation that constitutes; that for Africa as a whole, the estimated adaptation gap is about 80 percent; and that the adaptation gap is greater than 90% in nine countries. Most of these countries face major exposure and sensitivity to climate change risks as well as fiscal challenges.

Countries that have reduced the potential impact of climate change by more than 20 percent, include those with low climate change risks like Liberia, Namibia and Zimbabwe; high expenditure, for example Ethiopia, Gambia, Zambia; and lower risk and good expenditure countries like Rwanda, Senegal, Uganda.

The objectives of the Review of African Commitment to Adaptation was to provide some initial estimates of the current spending on adaptation by African governments, and to assess the extent to which this funding meets the scale of the adaptation challenge as determined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other assessments.

According to Nkem Ndi, there is a growing political will and socio-economic motivation in addressing climate change in Africa’s development agenda as demonstrated by the level of public expenditure on adaptation to climate change in the continent.

He pointed out that most adaptation expenditure in Africa is primarily linked to development expenditure that provides good benefits with current climate conditions.

Estimates of the adaptation expenditure were provided by classifying the most recent public finance data, preferably actual expenditure data rather than budget data, if it is available.

Actual data for 10 countries, and data obtained from the internet for additional 24 countries were used for the analyses in this study. The entire analyses in the study does not include expenditure by development partners that is outside the budget.

The study notes that despite its miniscule share of responsibility for the causes of climate change, Africa has always been labelled as a tenuous recipient of development assistance, with unending expectations of support in addressing climate impacts on its development.

While this stigma is baseless, it remains to be fully disbarred using empirical studies demonstrating regional investments for climate adaptation by the countries.

@PAMACC News

COP 23: What is at stake for Africa?

Delegates from about 196 countries have gathered in Bonn, Germany for what has become a semblance of a yearly ritual – the 23rd conference of parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The conference holds from the 6 -17 November 2017 in Bonn under the leadership of Fiji which is the first small island developing state to hold this role.

The COP is coming at a time extreme weather events like floods, hurricanes and fires have destabilized millions of people in Africa Asia, the Americas and the Caribbean. COP 23 therefore aspires to propel the world towards the next level of ambition needed to tackle global warming and put the world on a safer and more prosperous development path.

Africa and the COP Process

At the beginning of COP 22 in Marrakech, Morocco, November 2016, the Paris Agreement era had been ushered in. Countries of the world had demonstrated commitment and the Agreement had come into force faster than anticipated. Due to this reality, COP 22 then focused on how to make Paris agreement work by setting up mechanisms and structures that would facilitate its implementation.

A year later and with over 33 African countries ratifying the Paris Agreement, Africans are heading to Bonn with a bag full of expectations for the continent and the world.

As the region with least contribution to green house gas emissions and the most affected in terms of climate disasters, African delegates are not happy with the failure of the COP process to close the finance gap; inadequacy in pledges; delay in addressing ‘orphan issues’ under the Paris Agreement especially common time-frames for NDCs, and adjustment of existing NDCs. Others are recognition of developing countries’ adaptation efforts; guidance related to finance; and the slow pace and ambiguity in sequencing of work on the Paris Agreement Rule Book thus creating roadblocks in advancing the its formulation.

African demands

Prof Seth Osafo of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) believes that the slow progress by developed country parties towards reaching the US$100 billion goal of joint annual mobilisation by 2020 is not in Africa’s interest. Speaking at the African civil society Pre-COP workshop in Bonn, Prof Osafo said Africa’s interest lies in developed countries providing financial support to developing countries and positioning the Paris Committee on Capacity Building (PCCB) to provide support to developing countries in finance, technology and capacity building.

At the Pre-COP workshop organised by African civil society actors including farmers, pastoralists, youth and gender groups under the umbrella of the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance (PACJA), non-state actors from the region expressed their desire for loss and damage concerns to be fully taken into consideration as the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) shifts to serve the Paris Agreement after 2020.

According to Mithika Mwenda, Secretary General of the alliance, parties should establish a globally supported insurance mechanism (especially for agriculture and infrastructure sectors) in line with the objectives of the WIM for Loss & Damage by 2020. “We call on Parties to establish a framework, preferably outside but complimentary to UNFCCC, for addressing liability or compensation due to losses and damages in developing countries by extreme weather events and severe impacts of climate change” he added.

Pre-2020 commitments

Heading into the 23rd session of the Conference of Parties this year, one of the issues that have emerged as key expectation for African Parties to this year’s climate talks is progress on pre-2020 commitments.

African groups want COP23 to provide an opportunity for rich countries to revisit their commitment to undertake pre-2020 actions. The deliverables could be the concrete progress or signal with regards to the ratification of the Doha Amendment of the Kyoto Protocol (KP) to enable the entry into force of the second commitment period (for emissions reductions by developed countries under the KP) and the operationalisation of the US$100b per year from 2020 and other resources for developing countries.

The implementation of pre-2020 commitments which cover actions to be taken before the Paris Agreement comes into force are of high importance to safeguard the future of the climate.

Rule Book for Paris Agreement

Another issue of urgent African importance at this COP is progress on the work programme to implement the Paris Agreement. Negotiations on the Paris Rule Book will be critical to ensuring that the promises made in the Paris Agreement are met. Some of these promises include the commitment of governments to respect, protect and take into consideration existing human rights obligations.

To enhance the likelihood that the Paris Agreement is effectively implemented, when developing the Paris Rule Book, parties are expected to integrate human rights and the social and environmental principles reaffirmed in the agreement’s preamble, including the rights of indigenous peoples, public participation, gender equality, safeguarding food security and ending hunger, a just transition, and ecosystem integrity.

Facilitative Dialogue 2018

According to the agreement reached in Paris, a facilitative dialogue (FD 2018) is to be convened to take stock of the collective efforts of Parties in relation to progress towards the long-term goal of the Paris Agreement and to inform the preparation of nationally determined contributions (NDCs).

The Facilitative Dialogue is expected to ensure the linkage between policies, actions and means of implementation. It will also be instrumental to maintaining the political momentum of the Paris Agreement and its long-term goal and the need to be informed by what science indicates as necessary for climate actions and ambition for next 15 years.

The design of the dialogue as an overall feature together with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report on 1.5°C, the work of the climate champions and work of non-state actors, are critical for this purpose.

#PAMACC News Agency

AFF builds capacity in forest management towards a green growth path

As the global community turns attention and focus towards a green growth pathway, the African Forest Forum (AFF) is exploring avenues to improve forest management in a manner that better addresses poverty eradication and environmental protection in Africa.

The AFF, a pan-African non-governmental organization, is implementing a project titled: “Strengthening Sustainable Forest Management in Africa” to generate and share knowledge and information through partnerships in ways that will provide inputs into policy options and capacity building efforts.

One of the key project objectives is to enhance capacity of institutions and individuals – including farmers and farmer organizations, and other private sector actors, professional organizations, and public sector organizations – to achieve forest compatible development.

“The increased global interest in forestry management and green economy offers opportunities for resource mobilization from both public and private sources to support forest management in Africa,” said Professor Godwin Kowero, Executive Secretary of AFF. “The sustainable utilization and conservation of forests to maintain and/or enhance forest ecosystem services is a major part of the green growth pathway, because it also generates co-benefits such as the conservation of biodiversity while securing forest based livelihoods of local communities”.

Prof. Kowero recently addressed a regional workshop in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, which provided a platform for stakeholders in forestry education to deliberate on training programmes that will produce appropriate forestry graduates to manage forests in a changing world.

“The advocacy for effective forest management policies is now driven mainly by a strong and vibrant civil society and an increasingly informed population. It is therefore important to understand how forestry education on the continent is preparing the future generation in putting the forestry sector on a green economy pathway,” he stated.

He also touched on another key area – climate change – stating that over and above its contribution to climate change mitigation and adaptation, the role of forests in enhancing the climate resilience of communities to environmental changes in general is being recognized as an important opportunity.

“Due to the need to contain global warming, we have a new commercial product in the forestry sector, forest carbon. It is important to understand how our training institutions are handling these and related issues,” Prof. Kowero noted.

He further stated that it is very important to understand how our education in forestry is shaping a generation that can meaningfully use forest and tree resources to address issues of food and nutrition security on the continent.

The Africa Forest Forum has commissioned two studies in Anglophone, Lusophone and Francophone Sub-Sahara African countries that look into the needs of employers of forestry graduates from the universities and technical colleges.

The employer needs or expectations are matched with what these institutions offer in their curricula.

The AFF will receive and discuss the findings and decide how the continent can contain the identified gaps in training that have become apparent.

By Kofi Adu Domfeh

Report: Climate-Smart Agriculture practices help smallholders deal with extreme weather threats

Widespread adoption of Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) practices in Africa south of the Sahara (SSA) has a positive effect on crop production leading to price reduction and a decrease in the number of those at risk of hunger and malnutrition.

According to the 2016 Annual Trends and Outlook Report, rising temperatures, changes in rainfall patterns, and increased frequency of extreme weather events are expected to slow progress toward boosting the productivity of crop and livestock systems and improving food security in Africa south of the Sahara.

Mounting evidence shows climate change is likely to be a major threat not only to African agriculture, but also to meeting the poverty, zero hunger and several other Malabo Declaration goals.

The latest report outlines how CSA can help address the interlinked challenges of livelihoods, food security and climate change.  

“Over the years, the world has been experiencing increased frequency of extreme weather events that are threatening to slow progress toward increased agricultural productivity and hunger and malnutrition reduction, especially among African smallholder farmers,” said Shenggen Fan, director-general of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). “This calls urgently for an integrated framework to address this multifaceted threat. I am convinced Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA), with its multidisciplinary approach, offers an integrated tool to address the challenges of meeting future food and nutrition security demands under a changing climate.”

Evidence from the report – released by the Regional Strategic Analysis and Knowledge Support System (ReSAKSS) – suggests that the widespread adoption of CSA practices can have a positive effect on food production and total agricultural output, leading to a reduction in prices and decrease in the number of people at risk of hunger and children under five at risk of malnutrition.

Although cereal production is projected to double in Africa south of the Sahara (SSA) by mid-century, it will still be nearly 5 percent less due to negative impact of climate change. And because of climate change, 38 million more people, most of them in eastern Africa, are projected to be at risk of hunger in SSA in 2050. 

The latest report examines the contribution of CSA to meeting Malabo Declaration goals by taking stock of current knowledge on the effects of climate change, reviewing existing evidence of the effectiveness of various CSA strategies, and discussing examples of CSA-based practices and tools for developing evidence-based policies and programs. Agriculture leaders in several African countries have expressed their support for the adoption of CSA strategies and practices.

According to the report, adoption of CSA significantly increases both agricultural yields and net exports, highlighting the potential role of CSA in mitigating climate-induced risks in agricultural production and food security.

To ensure CSA is effective, the report recommends a slew of policy actions for its widespread adoption and implementation. These include CSA-related training programs for extension agents; policies and strategies that enhance the capacities of smallholder farmers as entrepreneurs; building storage facilities and creating the conditions for responsive markets for local value-chains; introducing payments for ecosystem services; expanding agriculture risk management programs, including formal insurance mechanisms like weather index insurance; and leveraging public-private partnerships to facilitate needed investments in  CSA practices and technologies.

Overall, the report’s findings suggest CSA practices can contribute to increasing resilience to climate change but more research is needed to develop reliable and inexpensive methods to verify emission reductions and monitor land use change as well as the trade-offs and synergies across different development outcomes.

The report was released today at the 2017 ReSAKSS Annual Conference in Maputo, Mozambique. The conference is organized by IFPRI in partnership with the African Union Commission.

New data highlights hidden impact of changing climate and erratic rainfalls

Repeated droughts around the world have shockingly large and often hidden consequences, destroying enough farm produce to feed 81 million people every day for a year, damaging forests, and threatening to trap generations of children in poverty.

That is according to a new report from the World Bank Group titled “Uncharted Waters: The New Economics of Water Scarcity and Variability” which presents new evidence on how increasingly erratic rainfall impacts farms, firms and families.

It also shows that although floods and storm surges pose major threats, droughts are “misery in slow motion,” with impacts deeper and longer lasting than previously believed.

“These impacts demonstrate why it is increasingly important that we treat water like the valuable, exhaustible, and degradable resource that it is,” said Guangzhe Chen, Senior Director of the World Bank’s Water Global Practice. “We need to better understand the impacts of water scarcity, which will become more severe due to growing populations and a changing climate.”

The report found that impacts caused by drought can cascade into unexpected areas.

For families, the effects of drought can span generations.  The report finds that in rural Africa, women born during extreme droughts bear the marks throughout their lives, growing up mentally and physically stunted, undernourished and unwell because of crop losses. 

New data shows that women born during droughts also have less education, fewer earnings, bear more children and are more likely to suffer from domestic violence. Their suffering is often passed on to the next generation, with their children more likely to be stunted and less healthy, perpetuating a vicious cycle of poverty.

On farms, repeated years of below-average rainfall not only destroys crop yield – it forces farmers to expand into nearby forests.  Since forests act as a climate stabilizer and help regulate water supplies, deforestation decreases water supply and exacerbates climate change.

For firms, the report calculates the economic costs of droughts as four times greater than that of floods.  A single water outage in an urban firm can reduce its revenue by more than 8%. And if that firm is in the informal sector, as many are in the developing world, sales decline by 35%, ruining livelihoods and stagnating urban economic growth.

Many of the regions most affected by drought overlap with areas that are already facing large food deficits and are classified as fragile, heightening the urgency of finding solutions.

“If we don’t take deepening water deficits and the bigger and more frequent storms that climate change will bring seriously, we will find water scarcity spreading to new regions of the world, potentially exacerbating issues of violence, suffering, and migration,” said the report’s author and World Bank’s Water Global Practice Lead Economist Richard Damania.  “Current methods for managing water are not up to the challenge.  This sea-change will require a portfolio of policies that acknowledge the economic incentives involved in managing water from its source, to the tap, and back to its source.”

The impacts of erratic rainfall ripple through farms, firms and families, sometimes for generations. The report offers proposals for how to tackle these challenges, calling for new policies, innovation and collaborations.  

The report recommends constructing new water storage and management infrastructure, paired with polices that control the demand for water.  Utilities responsible for water distribution in cities also need to be properly regulated to incentivize better performance and investment in network expansion, while also ensuring a fair market return. 

The report also noted that when flood and droughts turn into economic shocks, safety nets must be put in place to ensure poor families can weather the storm.

AfDB’s agricultural transformation strategy to guarantee 513 million tons of additional food production

The African Development Bank (AfDB) has developed a new initiative called the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) initiative – a knowledge and innovation-based response to the recognized need of scaling up proven technologies across Africa.

Already, 25 African countries have written letters to the AfDB confirming their interest and readiness to participate in TAAT, and help transform their agriculture.

It will support AfDB’s Feed Africa Strategy for the continent to eliminate the current massive importation of food and transform its economies by targeting agriculture as a major source of economic diversification and wealth, as well as a powerful engine for job creation.

The initiative will implement 655 carefully considered actions that should result in almost 513 million tons of additional food production and lift nearly 250 million Africans out of poverty by 2025.

TAAT will execute bold plans to contribute to a rapid agricultural transformation across Africa through raising agricultural productivity along eight Priority Intervention Areas (PIAs).

The commodities value chains to benefit from this initiative are rice, cassava, pearl millet, sorghum, groundnut, cowpea, livestock, maize, soya bean, yam, cocoa, coffee, cashew, oil palm, horticulture, beans, wheat and fish.

“TAAT was born out of this major consultation and brings together global players in agriculture, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research, the World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, World Food Programme, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, Rockefeller Foundation and national and regional agricultural research systems, ” said AfDB President, Akinwumi Adesina, at a TAAT side event at the 2017 World Food Prize in Des Moines, Iowa.

“It’s the biggest consolidation of efforts to accelerate agriculture technology uptake in Africa. Technology will address the variability and the new pests and diseases that will surely arise with climate change,” he said.

Adesina explained that TAAT would help break down decades of national boundary-focused seed release systems. Seed companies will have regional business investments, not just national ones, he said. “That will be revolutionary and will open up regional seed industries and markets.”

TAAT, he explained, is to be implemented through a collectively agreed central delivery platform, coordinated by the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture, with national, regional and international agricultural research centres.

“TAAT is a transformative and landmark partnership effort. The African Development Bank, World Bank, AGRA, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation intend to mobilize US $1 billion to help scale up technologies across Africa.”

The Director, External Communications in the African Region of the World Bank Group, Haleh Bridi, described TAAT as a regional technology delivery infrastructure for agriculture, linking countries across agro-ecological zones.

Bridi stressed that Africa can learn from Asia, which had made “amazing strides” in its agricultural revolution. “This is why we are involved in the TAAT programme,” she said to resounding applause.

The Director for Agricultural Development at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Nick Austin, said, “Technology obviously evolves the journey to prosperity, the way economies transform and the way small-holder farmers engage.”

“Locally, there are varieties. Locally, there are new technologies and solutions to small-holder farmers. We are in the position to play a key role in bringing the best technologies available and supporting new ways in delivering this to farmers. We are delighted and excited to be part of this initiative.”

The President of Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), Agnes Kalibata, stressed that African governments should drive technological development in agriculture.

“What TAAT is going to have to do is work with the governments. We have lots of institutions that are ready for these technologies. We should work with governments to ensure that the technologies are not just ready to work, but become available to their country people. I think that ensuring that the farmers get all the technologies they need is going to be very important,” she said.

The President of the Rockefeller Foundation, Raj Shah, highlighted the impact of technology on agricultural yields.