Scaling up climate-smart agriculture through the Africa Climate Business Plan
This report (PDF), by the World Bank Group assesses the policy framework for climate-smart agriculture (CSA) implementation and progress in CSA technology adoption for Africa under the Africa Climate Business Plan (ACBP). The ACBP was launched at the Conference of Parties (COP21) in Paris to address the interlinked challenges of food security and climate change and increase the efficiency and resilience of food systems in Africa. African countries scored low on the CSA Policy Indicators, especially readiness Mechanism, Services and Infrastructure, and the Aggregated Policy Index. South Africa, Tanzania and Rwanda are among the best prepared on the CSA Policy Indicators index, while Sudan, Central African Republic and Equatorial Guinee are among the least prepared. Countries adopted a range of context-specific climate-smart technologies and practices to meet their climate change and food security goals. Improved livestock production is the most prevalent practice in the climate-smart agriculture portfolio. Agroforestry is one of the most conspicuous land use systems across landscapes and agroecological zones in Africa. Digital technologies make it possible to collect and leverage huge amounts of critical data at minimal costs, making a farm’s field operations more insight-driven and potentially more productive and efficient. Most smallholder farmers rarely have access to crop insurance, due to large informational asymmetries and high transaction costs. The adoption of CSA practices face a variety of socio-economic and institutional barriers. Trade-offs are inherent in the attempt to achieve the triple win of food security, resilience and mitigation. More effort is needed to promote market system interventions to build resilience to climate change. A mix of absorptive, adaptive, and transformative capacities is needed to deliver resilient development outcomes. The report comes with two sets of recommendations to further enhance the upscaling of CSA: 1) Provide technical assistance and capacity development for climate-smart investment; 2) Accelerate the scaling up of CSA technologies and practices.