Climate change and African Agriculture: Challenges and Opportunites 

Climate change impacts on the productivity of the agricultural sector through processes such as weather uncertainty, environmental changes and pest or disease distributions, land degradation, land grabbing, heat and migration.

A number of solutions can be tested and scaled to reduce climate change impacts. These solutions include diversification of livelihood options, early warning systems and use of ICT to provide climate services, smart and sustainable crop and livestock management strategies/practices, alternative renewable energy sources such as solar and wind, preventive measures that reduce the chances of developing heat stress, and overarching regional adaptation governance strategy to tackle borderless climate risk.

 

Mainstreaming climate information into policy formulation in Africa

Climate information is essential for policy, decision-making, and climate action to promote global development agendas like the Paris Agreement, Sendai Framework of Disaster Risk Reduction, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and New Urban Agenda.

Over 45% Africa is dominated by arid or semi-arid climate with high rainfall variability and frequent episodes of weather/climate extremes. Yet, the use of climate information in policy formulation is still embryonic in most African countries.

There is a general increasing trend in weather/climate extremes across Africa. These observed increases would in the future continue with more frequent and severe extremes as the climate system is forced with increasing concentration of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. There is, therefore, a need to integrate climate information into decision-making processes and policy formulation of most African countries, because their economy mostly relies on climate-dependent sectors. For example, agriculture contributes an average of 15% (ranging from 3% to 50%) to the GDP of sub-Saharan Africa, engaging more than half of the continent’s labour force. Also, the agricultural sector in sub-Saharan Africa is mostly rain-fed, making it a highly vulnerable sector to climate change and climate variability. This portends severe implications for human health and security over the continent. These, coupled with the low adaptive capabilities of communities living in sub-Saharan Africa, will increase their exposure to climate-related disasters, which often lead to humanitarian crises, jeopardising decades of socio-economic progress and increasing the risk for food and water insecurity.

 

Innovative Strategies for climate mitigation and adaptation in urban areas in Africa

Climate change is impacting the world at large through both fast and slow onset events. Extreme events such as sea-level rise, floods, and urban heat-stress are impacting urban areas severely. The effect of climate change in metropolitan areas covers environmental, social, economic and spatial impacts.

 

Towards Indigenous Knowledge in climate change: Prospects from a multiple evidence approach

Within the climate change research community, there is now growing acknowledgement of indigenous knowledge (IK) in climate impact assessment, mitigation and adaptation. An important lesson emerging from this recognition is the need to integrate IK in mainstream climate science. However, as this agenda unfolds, the nature, level and process of integration is still shrouded in controversy. While some authorities favour a citizen science approach, others push for more radical emancipatory and decolonial methodologies that see IK as legitimate in its own right. Given the peculiarity of climate change as a field of enquiry and the complexities of IK from the diverse environments in which the knowledge is understood and applied, there is need for an approach that makes IK more acceptable on the scientific front while remaining judicious in the eyes of the holders of this knowledge. We propose the use of the multiple evidence approach (MEA) as a way to strengthen the recognition of IK in climate change science. Referred to as ‘visibilist’ approach, this paradigm argues that climate change is visible to local indigenous populations and can be tracked based on their personal experiences with climatic phenomena. Aside from guiding the meaningful participation of indigenous people in climate change research, this approach ensures that the knowledge held by people witnessing climate change can be utilised to enhance understanding of climate change from impact.

 

Resolving challenges associated with climate change modelling in Africa

For the practical planning of local issues such as rain-fed agriculture, water resources availability and flood management, African countries need information at a local scale. Recent approaches for obtaining high spatial resolution information are downscaling techniques:

• Statistical downscaling methods, which consist in making an empirical observation-based link between large-scale variables, also called predictors, and local variables called predictants;
   
• Dynamical downscaling methods, which are based on the use of regional climate model (RCMs). In fact, this method consists in using the outputs of a global climate model (GCM) as boundary conditions to drive the RCM.

 

Addressing climate change in AFrica: Challenges and the way forward focus on Biodiversity and ecosystem functioning 

Africa’s terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems and their biodiversity are especially threatened. Ongoing loss of biodiversity in Africa is driven by a combination of human-induced factors (including poverty). The continent continues to experience deforestation and forest degradation at alarming rates. The negative impacts of climate change on species and ecosystems are exacerbating the effects of all these pressures.

 

Climate change mitigation strategies to improve resilience in food/fodder and cash crops/species (sorghum, cowpea, cocoa and andropogon Gayanus) in West Africa

Sorghum, cowpea and cocoa are crops grown for human consumption, animal feeding or energy production, and are also used as cash crops providing important income for farmers in West Africa. Andropogon gayanus is herbaceous species of savannah ecosystems in West Africa commonly used for livestock feeding.

Moreover, the fodder species (Moringa oleifera, Leucena leucocephala, Newbouldia laevis, etc.) is used as an alternative in livestock feeding and care as substitutes to conventional chemotherapeutic drugs.

All these crops/species are facing climate worsening effects resulting in limited water access for agricultural production. Drought stress affects the crop/species depending on the developmental stage, its severity, the duration of the stress and the species itself. Drought stress can dramatically affect yield and even causes a total failure of the crop. In sub-Sahran Africa (SSA), the effect of this stress becomes severe because of low soil fertility.
Therefore, it is crucial to identify new strategies to reduce drought effects on these crops/species in order to achieve better production in West Africa.