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Research
- Overview
- Enabling sustainable intensification and diversification of food production
- Building resilience and reducing climatic risks in smallholder systems
- Developing sustainable landscape management plans and inclusive governance of agro-ecologies
- Catalyzing gender-responsive youth entrepreneurship and job creation
- Integrating and validating gender-transformative scaling readiness
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West and Central African Food Systems Transformation





- Genetic Innovation
- Resilient Agrifood Systems
- Systems Transformation


Challenge
Agriculture makes up between 30 and 50 percent of GDP in West and Central Africa (WCA) and provides income and livelihoods to 70 to 80 percent of the population. Some 65 percent of the region’s labor force is in rural areas, where 42 percent of women practice smallholder farming.
Climate change is creating significant challenges for the sector which, as a result, is struggling to produce sufficient food for the needs of the region’s growing population. Reduced biodiversity is having a negative impact on soil health and crop production, while markets and value chains are fragmented due to large post-harvest losses, aging infrastructure and a non-supportive policy environment.
Food security in the region falls by an estimated 5 to 20 percent with each flood or drought, while food calories from key crops are falling by around 1.4 percent per year. Increasingly, consumers are turning to unhealthy, imported and ultra-processed food, increasing the triple burden of malnutrition.
While agricultural exports are rising, Africa remains a net food importer at an annual cost of $43 billion. Without action, the continent’s food import bill could top $110 billion by 2025.
Objective
This Initiative aims to improve nutrition, incomes, and food security within the context of climate change in West and Central Africa through nutritious, climate-adapted, and market-driven food systems.
Activities
This objective will be achieved through:
- Enabling sustainable intensification and diversification of food production through sustainable seed systems and improved management practices by pursuing demand-creation to promote nutritious foods, co-designing cost-effective, diverse and sustainable production systems and promoting good agricultural practices.
- Managing climate risks and accessing services through informed digital agriculture by creating or improving, contextualizing and complementing existing digital services for small-scale farmers, value chain actors and governments to facilitate informed decision-making.
- Creating pathways for scaling land and water innovations for resilient agrifood systems by combining participatory tools and citizen science to co-develop and implement inclusive landscapes, owned by communities, that enable sustainable scaling of bundled land, water, aquaculture and climate-smart agronomic and digital innovations.
- Enhancing youth and women’s entrepreneurship models in food value chains by promoting and preparing youth and women in developing and managing agribusinesses while addressing social barriers.
- Creating a coherent management system to catalyse the Initiative’s impact at scale, combining state-of-the-art, evidence-based solutions to articulate the demand for research and innovations and increase impact investments.
Engagement
This Initiative will work in Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Rwanda.
Outcomes
Proposed 3-year outcomes include:
- At least 30,000 smallholder households will have access to climate-resilient nutrient-dense crop varieties, and at least 8,000 of them will use five climate resilient, nutrient-dense crop varieties and 6 good agronomic practices.
- At least 10 key partners in the next phase implementation plans consistently use three validated scaling tools.
- At least two governments use inclusive approaches to landscape management and 20 rural communities develop informed and inclusive land and water management plans that will diversify income from agriculture and increase production to create jobs and stability.
- Timely climate information and early warning systems for improved decision-making are in use by 3 million farmers, 30 value chain actors and three governments.
- The Women Empowerment in Agriculture Index shows a 5% increase in the target countries.
- Household dietary diversity scores increase by at least 30% in the target countries.
- At least 10,000 youth and 5,000 women are engaged in value-added activities related to agriculture, and at least 50% of these will have access to credit.
Impact
Projected impacts and benefits include:
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NUTRITION, HEALTH & FOOD SECURITY
Access to quality, nutrient-dense seed and climate-smart agricultural practices, as well as reduced post-harvest losses, will contribute to food and nutrition and health security for 8.82 million people (1.76 million households). |
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POVERTY REDUCTION, LIVELIHOODS & JOBS
The provision of opportunities and tools for women and youth to engage in the labor market, coupled with an increase in their access to finance, will contribute to poverty reduction, livelihoods and job creation for 8.82 million people (1.76 million households). |
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GENDER EQUALITY, YOUTH & SOCIAL INCLUSION
Through a gender–transformative approach and by reducing the risks in agricultural production, 1.28 million youth and 2 million women will be empowered, reducing existing gender gaps and increasing business opportunities. Support for enabling regulatory and policy environments will contribute to creating a socially inclusive platform for public and private partnerships. |
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CLIMATE ADAPTATION & MITIGATION
The matching of digital supply–demand services will increase productivity and improve adaptation to climate change for 4.41 million people (almost a million households). |
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ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH & BIODIVERSITY
Through citizen science, landlessness and disputes among resource users will be mitigated, while issues of poor environmental health and biodiversity loss will be addressed through good governance of natural resources, bringing 3.93 million hectares of land under improved management. |
Projected benefits are a way to illustrate reasonable orders of magnitude for impacts which could arise as a result of the impact pathways set out in the Initiative’s theories of change. In line with the 2030 Research and Innovation Strategy, Initiatives contribute to these impact pathways, along with other partners and stakeholders. CGIAR does not deliver impact alone. These projections therefore estimate plausible levels of impact to which CGIAR, with partners, contribute. They do not estimate CGIAR’s attributable share of the different impact pathways.
Partnerships are essential to the success of CGIAR Initiatives. Each Initiative will engage a wide range of different types of partners supporting demand, innovation and scaling including: academic, training and research partners; private-sector partners; government and other public-sector partners; multilateral organizations; foundations; international, regional, national and local NGOs; and public-private partnerships.
Header photo: Dr Hakeem Ajeigbe, ICRISAT scientist and Nigeria country representative, in a sorghum field. Photo by C. de Bode/CGIAR.