This paper investigates the determinants that may influence upland rice cultivation in Casamance and eastern Senegal. The main objective is to understand the climatic, pedological and socio-economic factors that explain the motivation of farmers in this southern zone of Senegal to grow upland rice. Various types of data were mobilized to highlight this study.

Certification of sustainability standards is an important governance strategy aimed at enhancing the human well-being outcomes of agri-food value chains. While the impacts of certification on well-being are positive for some farmers under certain conditions, they are insignificant or adverse for others. Many barriers can impede positive impacts of certification on well-being. Alternative or complementary strategies such as inclusive business and solidarity economy may challenge these barriers.

The Accelerating Impact of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA) project activities in Kenya are focused on improving the quality of Climate Smart Agricultural (CSA) practices and information services in the Arid and Semi-Arid Land (ASAL) areas of Kenya. The project seeks to increase awareness and uptake of selected climate-smart agricultural (CSA) practices and improve access to Climate Information Services (CIS), especially by women and the youth.

In the Colombian Amazon, there has been long-term and sustained loss of primary forest threatening biodiversity and climate change mitigation. Silvopastoral practices that integrate trees into livestock production could help address both local economic and wider environmental challenges. We aimed to assess the effects of silvopastoral practices on invertebrate communities on smallholder farms in Caquetá, Colombia. Using sweep nets and malaise trapping, invertebrate communities were compared between traditional pasture, silvopasture and forest edge habitats.

A baseline survey for Zambia was undertaken November 2022. A total of 705 households were interviewed in this survey from 7th to 19th November, in 8 camps within 5 districts in Southern and Eastern provinces. These sites are earmarked for intervention by the UU initiative. The questionnaire focused on the October 2021-May 2022 rainy season targeting 5 main crops. The baseline report summarizes the main descriptive findings of the analysis of this baseline data.

In recent work, Manners et al. (2022) crowdsourced the Diet Quality Questionnaire (DDQ), assessing whether a lean and low-cost data collection system could be deployed for mapping of diet quality. In 52 weeks of data collection, the system generated responses from more than 80,000 unique respondents, collecting around 1800 respondents per week. The preliminary success of the piloted system points towards a viable alternative modality for deployment for the DQQ. Crowdsourcing data is an attractive option for the DQQ, generating data at a relatively low-cost.

Rural labor markets in Africa are frequently characterized by underemployment, with farmers unable to fully deploy throughout the year one of their most important assets—their labor. Using a nine-year panel data set on 1,407 working-age adults from rural Malawi, we document changes in rural underemployment over this period and how they are associated with urbanization. Nearby urban growth results in increased hours worked in casual labor (ganyu) and in non-agricultural sectors, at the expense of work on the household farm.

As part of the AICCRA project, the West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL) and the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) are mandated to develop curricula and training materials to accelerate the mainstreaming of climate information services (CIS) and climate-smart agriculture (CSA) into university curricula in Africa.

This report analyses the content of Guatemalan and regional-level Central American policy and strategy documents in order to assess the extent and nature of engagement with the climate, peace, and security nexus, as well as the degree to which cross-sectoral and cross-scalar coherence exists between sectors relevant to the nexus.