Accelerating the scaling of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) requires institutional innovations and interactions among stakeholders operating across scales. The West Africa CSA Alliance (WACSA) and the Central Africa CSA Alliance (CACSA) are two CSA institutional innovations operating at regional scale and aimed at facilitating dialogue and discussions among stakeholders, as well as fostering collective actions to transform and reorient agricultural systems in face of climate change.

The SIMFS initiative in Ethiopia is implemented under the scheme of sustainable intensification of crop-livestock mixed farming systems. Its purposes are to encourage the adoption and innovation of sustainable intensification technologies that improve crop, livestock, and water productivity, and conserve natural resources for smallholder farmers in Ethiopia.

The National Stakeholder Consultation workshop, held in New Delhi on December 4, 2023, marked a pivotal step in advancing digital innovation and inclusion in agriculture. Jointly organized by the CGIAR Digital Innovation (DI) Initiative team from IRRI and IWMI, along with CRISP, this workshop served as a platform for sharing progress on the Digital Inclusion Index (DII) and the implementation of the Rice Crop Manager (RCM) within India's dynamic agri-digital ecosystem.

Climate change presents significant challenges to countries worldwide, and Ethiopia is not exceptional (Simane et al., 2016). The nation confronts a wide array of climate risks that pose substantial obstacles to its sustainable development and the well-being of its people. Ethiopia is particularly vulnerable to climaterelated hazards due to its predominantly agricultural economy and large population reliant on rain-fed farming.

To contribute to building sustainable and effective climate change adaptation solutions avoiding usability gap, it is largely recommended to engage in the process of co-production, integrating expertise and knowledge from various academic and non-academic actors. We want to learn if and how co-production, believed to effectively link knowledge and decision-making, and thus suggested as the best practice in building decision-support frameworks, is really applied in the frameworks that are being implemented on the ground.

Agriculture plays a major role in economic growth, but it is also an important source of greenhouse gas emissions in Kenya. To achieve Kenya’s NDC target of cutting GHG emissions by 32% by 2030 relative to business-as-usual (BAU) of 143 MtCO2 eq, there is need to identify and promote scalable innovations for food system emissions reduction. The CGIAR Initiative on Low-Emission Food Systems (Mitigate+) can contribute towards Kenya’s NDC. The Mitigate+ Initiative aims to reduce annual global food system emissions by 7% by 2030. Kenya is among the prioritized countries for the initiative.

This report reviews trends and availability of sex-disaggregated data on various aspects of gender and CSA, including agricultural innovation, decision-making, time use and access to resources. It uses data collected by the CGIAR and other organizations to analyse gender trends at global, regional and national levels.

This summary presentation gives context on the current state of CSA in Africa, providing relevant cases and highlighting key action areas for transitioning toward climate-resilient, inclusive and productive agricultural systems.

The AICCRA project, led by IITA recently introduced some climate smart Agricultural Innovations and Climate information services to help improve upon the farming activities and livelihoods of farmers in some selected communities in Ghana. Innovations such as the use of improved seeds, proper soil and nutrient management practices and integration of climatic data into decision making were introduced to farmers in five agro-ecological zones cutting across six regions in Ghana.

Rice yield forecasting is a crucial task for management and planning. A rice yield estimation system (RIICE) was developed based on the crop growth model ORYZA and SAR derived key information such as start of season (SOS) and leaf area growth rate. Results from study sites in Sikasso and Segou regions suggest that incorporating remote sensing data, specifically Synthetic aperture radar (SAR), into a process-based crop model improves the spatial distribution of yield estimates.

Sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) has degraded soils, epitomized by decades of loss of valuable topsoil caused by continuous cultivation, monocropping, excessive run-off, and the absence of effective conservation-based farming practices. Conservation Agriculture (CA) offers several opportunities to restore land and arrest soil degradation in smallholder farming systems of SSA. This study assessed labor productivity and farm returns associated with CA in Malawi and Zambia using household survey data collected from 500 and 616 farmers in Zambia and Malawi, respectively.