This paper discusses external influences on innovation platforms (IPs) and the options for effective responses. The platforms examined in this paper were conceived as vehicles for facilitating institutional change in support of innovation that benefits smallholders, in selected agro-enterprise domains in Benin, Ghana and Mali. They were designed and implemented in a manner that enabled experimentation with processes of change in the selected domains.
The 2021 Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC 2021) highlights the remarkably high severity and numbers of people in Crisis or worse (IPC/CH Phase 3 or above) or equivalent in 55 countries/territories, driven by persistent conflict, pre-existing and COVID-19-related economic shocks, and weather extremes. The number identified in the 2021 edition is the highest in the report’s five-year existence. The report is produced by the Global Network against Food Crises (which includes WFP), an international alliance working to address the root causes of extreme hunger.
In the Office du Niger large rice farming irrigation scheme in Mali, water management has been a permanent source of tension between the smallholder tenants and the administration. The transfer of tertiary canal maintenance to the tenant farmers was expected to improve water management but, in practice, that rather led to deterioration.
L’article analyse, à l’aide de la méthode ImpresS conçue par le Cirad, un processus d’innovation impulsé par les utilisatrices d’un équipement de transformation : le décortiqueur et blanchisseur de fonio (Digitaria exilis Stapf) en Afrique de l’Ouest. L’identification du système d’acteurs et le récit chronologique du processus d’innovation ont été mobilisés pour caractériser les mécanismes et les conditions qui expliquent la réussite de cette innovation.
Le Mali a quadruplé sa population entre 1960 et 2020. Cette croissance démographique implique des besoins d’accès à la sécurité alimentaire et nutritionnelle, à la santé, à l’éducation et à l’emploi pour les primo arrivants. C’est le secteur agricole qui est sollicité par les politiques publiques pour répondre à cette demande. Quelle est la tendance démographique dans la zone cotonnière du Mali ? Quelles ont été les réponses locales face aux implications de cette croissance démographique en termes d’accès à la santé et à l’éducation ?
Due to political conflict, hundreds of thousands of people had to leave their homes in northern Mali in the last decade. Many have since returned to their home but struggle to regain their livelihoods. In the Timbuktu region, food insecurity is very high and 15 percent of children under 5 years old suffer from acute malnutrition. Goundam, one of the administrative districts of the Timbuktu region, is populated by livestock farmers. Among the previously displaced people, many have lost all their livestock, and with that their traditional means of livelihood.
Local banks, NGOs and public institutions worked closely to ensure that women could access loans, join associations and have their voices be heard in collective decision-making processes. It also allowed these women and their communities to make collective investments that would increase their production, stabilize and diversify their nutrition, and ultimately achieve a better life.
Geographic information system (GIS) data is often used to map socio-economic data with a spatial component. This data, which is obtained from multiple open-source databases, complements official statistics and generates additional spatial inputs to statistical and econometric analyses. IFAD uses impact assessments using data from face-to-face interviews in order to determine the impact of their projects on strategic goal and objectives. However, the COVID-19 pandemic meant these interviews could no longer take place.
Society’s learning capacity in the field of sustainable land resource management is at stake and more emphasis on knowledge management is needed to guarantee that the accumulated knowledge is shared in such a way that the right actors have appropriate knowledge at the right time to take the best decisions. Efficient policies governing structures for national and regional knowledge management need to be formulated and the working procedures of the various actors in the field need to be defined more sharply.
SOUTIEN À L’ADAPTATION AUX CHANGEMENTS CLIMATIQUES AU MALI On s’attend à ce que les changements climatiques provoquent de plus en plus d’événements extrêmes (sécheresses et inondations) au Mali, rendant la production de cultures et l’élevage plus difficiles pour les agriculteurs et réduisant ainsi la sécurité alimentaire et les revenus des plus pauvres du pays.