Building Capacity for Climate-Resilient Food Systems in Africa

Climate change exponentially impacts Africa. With claims that Africa is heating up twice as fast as the global mean, addressing African and in turn global food and geo-securities, takes on an urgent impetus. Sustainable strategies are needed, specifically for agriculture and food systems, to adapt to changing climate patterns. The consortium will leverage evolving science, including thematic areas such as:

• assessing greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector,
• the role of agricultural lands as carbon sinks,
• climate change adaptation and
• the development of climate-smart and digitised agriculture.

We respond with African human capacity our proposal recognises that evidence-based knowledge is needed to implement strategies both on a broad basis and also to tailor them to local socio-ecological conditions within the ‘climate crisis’. We offer academics and practitioners a thorough understanding of climate change and local agricultural systems and development of up-to-date skills in the digital era. Through student and staff exchanges which will be buttressed by virtual and hybrid workshops, the project team has acknowledged differentiated capacity in the field of climate change adaptation and mitigation in agricultural systems to create pathfinding impact. While also including Masters, our focus, will be on staff members with doctoral degrees at African universities. Many African universities lack staff members with doctoral qualifications, yet have a strategic intent to increase their numbers. Such a cohort contributes to the sustainability of a project in that it creates systems level multiplier effects in universities and countries. Supporting such a system change, we plan a hybrid mentorship programme, that develops early career researchers, with an emphasis on young female researchers. These postgraduate students with high levels of employability will bring benefits to Africa’s citizens and knowledge economy.