Smart agriculture: ECOWAS trains actors from the Centre-East and East in the formulation of climate-smart projects
About thirty actors from the Center-East and East regions are taking part, from July 20 to 22, 2023, in Manga (Centre-South region), in a capacity building session on the formulation and implementation of climate-smart projects at the initiative of the Regional Agency for Agriculture and Food (ARAA/ECOWAS).
The workshop is held as part of the implementation of the regional project to promote Climate-Smart Agriculture (AIC) in West Africa (AIC-WA).
“This workshop aims to equip you with a better understanding of what the new concept of climate-smart agriculture is, but also to provide you with all the tools, methods and approaches to enable you to formulate projects with an AIC connotation and to implement the various activities around AIC in a very successful way”, entrusted to the participants, at the start of the work, the West Africa coordinator of the International Center for Agricultural Research (CIAT)/AICCRA, Robert Zougmoré.
Mr. Zougmoré explained that CSA refers to a new concept which makes a compromise between three specific objectives to be achieved. He cited food security through sustainably increasing production, improving adaptation to climate change and mitigating the effects of climate change through reducing greenhouse gases and carbon sequestration in agricultural activities.
For the Regional Director of Agriculture, Animal and Fisheries Resources of the Center-South, Amos Congo, the training comes at the right time in the sense that it will allow “to support technicians and agents of agriculture, livestock and the environment to know how to formulate climate-smart projects that they will implement in the field”.
He explained that climate change has a negative impact on agro-silvo-pastoral production, as is the case with the late start of the current agricultural campaign in the Center-South, in mid-July, due to the lack of rainfall.
Faced with these phenomena, “it is necessary to find the appropriate ways and means to enable the agricultural system to be resilient”, noted Mr. Congo, who welcomes the initiative of the regional project to promote Climate-Smart Agriculture (AIC) in West Africa (AIC-WA) to equip participants on the theme.
The focal point of the AIC project in Burkina Faso, Yassia kindo, recalled that beyond the resilience of producers in the face of climate change, the practice of AIC also allows the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions which are the causes of said changes.
The regional project to promote Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) in West Africa (AIC-WA) is implemented by the Regional Agency for Agriculture and Food (ARAA/ECOWAS) in partnership with the Bioversity International Alliance and CIAT through the Accelerating the Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA) Program and the National Program Management Units (PMUs).
The project is financed by BOAD and the Adaptation Fund and operates in five West African countries, namely Benin, Niger, Burkina Faso, Togo and Ghana.
Source: Burkina Information Agency