Gender mainstreaming was acknowledged as an indispensable strategy for achieving gender equality at the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action. Since then, governments have made substantial efforts in developing gender-responsive policies and implementation strategies. The advent of climate change and its effects, which have continued to impact rural livelihoods and especially food security, demands that gender mainstreaming efforts are accelerated.
This paper comparatively analyzes the structure of agricultural policy development networks that connect organizations working on agricultural development, climate change and food security in fourteen smallholder farming communities across East Africa, West Africa and South Asia.
An extensive discussion in academic literature and policy currently celebrates Multi-Stakeholder Platforms (MSPs) as novel organizational forms that promote knowledge co-creation and innovation uptake among farmers and other stakeholders to address great challenges surrounding agri-food systems. While MSPs represent relatively novel organizations to address critical challenges such as rural poverty, food insecurity, and the negative effects of climate change, little is known on how they influence farmer innovation.
It has long been recognized that investment is needed to build capacity in Science Technology and Innovation (STI) particularly in low and medium income (LMI) countries. Yet there is little understanding as to how to do this.
This training manual was developed for Africa RISING, a USAID funded research-for-development (R4D) program that recognizes gender mainstreaming as key for achieving its overall research and development objectives. The program is based on an integrated action research and farming-systems approach, and strives for gender transformation. A gender capacity assessment in 2015 identified a pronounced demand among Africa RISING scientists for training in gender analysis. As a first step towards addressing this need, an annotated bibliography with selected sources for self-learning was developed.
This publication brings some sucessful experiencies in Digital Agriculture in African countries. In this issue of Spore, it is explored how digitalisation is providing women with better access to finance, information and markets, as well as opening up new opportunities for young entrepreneurs to develop apps and other digital services in agribusiness
In this paper, is first described the design and development process of a modular ICT application system called GeoFarmer. Geofarmer was designed to provide a means by which farmers can communicate their experiences, both positive and negative, with each other and with experts and consequently better manage their crops and farms. We designed GeoFarmer in a collaborative, incremental and iterative process in which user needs and preferences were paramount.
Most of the world's agricultural extension services are funded and delivered by the public sector with the private sector contributing approximately 5%. The low private sector engagement in provision of agricultural extension may be attributed to poor enabling environment, which has deterred rather than encouraged private sector investment. Debates on engaging private sector in agricultural extension argue that private investment in extension is bound to generate agricultural productivity. Consequently, PPPs in agriculture are considered to be drivers for modernization of the sector.
Este artículo analiza algunos conceptos sobre el desarrollo de cadenas de valor como un tipo de intervención que promueve el crecimiento agrícola y apunta a mejorar los ingresos de los productores mediante el fortalecimiento de los vínculos entre las empresas y los pequeños productores.
The purpose of this study is to develop a robust, rigorous and replicable methodology that is flexible to data limitations and spatially prioritizes the vulnerability of agriculture and rural livelihoods to climate change. The methodology was applied in Vietnam, Uganda and Nicaragua, three contrasting developing countries that are particularly threatened by climate change. We conceptualize vulnerability to climate change following the widely adopted combination of sensitivity, exposure and adaptive capacity.