A national flour blending policy is about to be implemented in Kenya. This requires maize flour (the country’s main staple) to be blended with at least 10 percent of either one or a composite of traditional crops, such as sorghum and millet.1 The blending ratio is expected to increase gradually, with the goal of ultimately reaching 30 percent. The policy envisages achieving several goals. The first is to improve the nutritional quality of maize flour: sorghum and millet (and other candidate blending crops) have micronutrient characteristics that are absent in maize.

The Paris Agreement, which entered force in 2016, requires involved Parties to submit Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Today, it is well known that global agriculture both contributes to, and is affected by, the changing climate, which calls for an integrated role of farming in climate policy formation. Currently, different efforts aim to increase agricultural productivity, and to mitigate and adapt to climate change through the use of climate-smart agriculture (CSA). However, the efficacy of CSA in contributing to the NDCs has been the subject of debate.

Seasonal price variability for cereals is two to three times higher in Africa than on the international reference market. Seasonality is even more pronounced when access to appropriate storage and opportunities for price arbitrage are limited. As smallholder farmers typically sell their production after harvest, when prices are low, this leads to lower incomes as well as higher food insecurity during the lean season, when prices are high. One solution to reduce seasonal stress is the use of improved storage technologies.

Women farmers in Bangladesh face several challenges when it comes to accessing technology and information, and this limits their ability to improve their agricultural productivity and enhance their livelihoods. The gendered digital divide is a significant contributor to inequities in agriculture and has important implications for women’s empowerment. Lack of access to information affects their ability to make informed decisions, access markets, and secure their rights.

The sub-national Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan enacted Farm Services Centers Act, 2014, to establish Model Farm Services Centers (MFSCs) and Farm Services Centers as “one stop-shop” based on public-private partnership principle to strengthen extension system.

This report builds off the pre-feasibility study by AICCRA & FACS entitled ‘Sorghum Business Case Development’. The report aims to provide an overview of the post-feasibility and implementation phase activities being undertaken by AICCRA under The Aggregator Growth Development & Investment Program in Kenya to co-design a comprehensive scalable climate-smart bundled finance solution targeting the Sorghum Value Chain

Zambia has historically qualified as a regional model of stability and peace. However, this status is being undermined by several socio-political factors, including deeply entrenched patterns of social inequality and gender discrimination, high levels of poverty and youth unemployment, as well as recurring episodes of electoral violence. Climate and extreme weather events compound most of these vulnerabilities and even create new ones, generating societal dynamics that will likely increase social tensions with greater risk of insecurity.

This Study forms part of the research under Work Package #4 (WP4) of CGIAR Research Program: Building Systemic Resilience against Climate Variability and Extremes (ClimBeR), which has the overarching goal of “setting up a bottom-up polycentric governance framework for promoting multiscale transformative adaptation options and targeted climate investments”.

The main finding of this review report of seed (related) policies and laws in 14 African countries is that, although in most countries there is some form of acknowledgment that farmer-managed seed systems exist, there are not many positive results related to recognition of and concrete support for farmer-managed seed systems (policy, legal, technical, operational, and financial support).