Community Markets for Conservation (COMACO) is a social enterprise that finances improved agricultural practices through the adoption of agroforestry and a legume-based farming system that increases food crop yields and market opportunities for over 230,000 small-scale farmers. The proposed project will build on this foundation that spans 19 years of growing a brand called It’s Wild! of 20 different value-added food products by partnering with the Chitetezo Co-operative Federation.

Farmed insects can provide an alternative protein source for humans, livestock, and fish, while supporting adaptation to climate change, generating income for smallholder farmers, and reducing the negative impacts of conventional food production, especially in the tropics. However, the quantity, nutritional quality and safety of insects greatly relies on their feed intake. Tropical forages (grasses and legumes) can provide a valuable and yet untapped source of feed for several farmed insect species.

This report summarizes a workshop, which was held in Dakar on 10 November 2021, that introduced AICCRA-Senegal partners to Climate Maprooms, data, and other relevant tools and platforms that are available through ANACIM. Presentations covered ANACIM products and strategy for agriculture and related sectors, the ENACTS approach to strengthening national capacity to provide locally actionable climate information, and analyses of the quality of ANACIM’s gridded historical data that serve as a foundation for localized climate information products.

Agricultural research has been traditionally driven by linear approaches dictated by hypothesis-testing. With the advent of powerful data science capabilities, predictive, empirical approaches are possible that operate over large data pools to discern patterns. Such data pools need to contain well-described, machine-interpretable, and openly available data (represented by high-scoring Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable—or FAIR—resources).

Ustadi and CTA have jointly implemented the project “Youth economic empowerment through agribusiness in Kenya (VijaBiz)” in the Nakuru and Kilifi counties in Kenya. The project aimed to create sustainable employment for rural youth through active engagement in agribusiness for wealth creation and poverty reduction. More specifically, VijaBiz built entrepreneurship capacity for 163 youth agribusiness groups in cereals, dairy and fishery value chains in the Kilifi and Nakuru counties.

Climate change threatens the livelihoods of millions of small-scale farmers in East Africa. How farmers perceive climate change and its impacts has a strong bearing on how they adapt to the adverse impacts. This paper focused on factors that determine climate change adaptation and perceptions among small-scale farmers of Embu County. A survey was carried out across five sub-counties of Embu County where a multi-stage sampling procedure was used to select 411 households. A questionnaire was administered to each household. A total of five FGDs were generated by the use of quota sampling.

We use CDRs of mobile phone users in Uganda combined with data from a phone survey to train machine-learning models to predict the sex of the mobile phone user and several indicators of economic empowerment such as ownership of a house and land, occupation, and decision-making over household income. The most accurate of the models predicts the sex of the mobile phone user with 78% accuracy. The different indicators of economic empowerment are predicted with accuracies ranging from 57% to 61%. We also predict users’ sex and economic empowerment jointly.

The problem addressed in this paper is the challenge of moving from formulating policy goals to achieving the promised results. The purpose is to assess the possible role of innovation in agriculture as a way of contributing towards achieving the Malabo Declaration commitments and the zero hunger Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG2) in six African countries. Since the SDGs are high on both international and many national agendas, there is a need to increase our knowledge of how to move beyond formulating goals.

Small ruminant value chain development started in Ethiopia as part of Livestock and Fish CRP in 2012 in seven sites representing different regions of Ethiopia, production systems and communities. The objective of the initiative was to test technological and institutional innovations that would transform the small ruminant value chain and this involved rigorous procedures.