The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) shut down its activities in December 2020 at the end of its mandate. The administrative closure of the Centre was completed in November 2021.

Southern Africa

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Articles

Blog articles

Harnessing synergies of crop-livestock integration for climate-smart agriculture

Integrated crop-livestock systems that provide synergies towards more resilient climate-smart agricultural production systems are possible despite the recognised competition between crops and livestock enterprises. To make this work, it is necessary to understand the trade-offs and capitalise on the opportunities provided through integration.

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Founded by Abraham Cambridge in 2014, The Sun Exchange is based in South Africa where the company is working to address a huge gap in funding for solar projects. Today, their solution is helping to power factories, schools and wildlife. In this article, Cambridge details Sun Exchange’s experience with blockchain technology.

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Many climate-smart agriculture (CSA) innovations have been developed to help farmers achieve the triple wins of adaptation, productivity and, where possible, reduced emissions. As efforts by different organisations move forward to improve adoption, it is clear that a wide range of factors influence uptake of CSA. Field experiences with CSA projects in three countries highlight how developing shared value among partners has supported the scaling up of CSA.

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When engaging with youth agripreneurs in Africa on the challenges they face, access to finance emerges as a key concern. Closer scrutiny of their business models generally reveals that young entrepreneurs are often not deemed creditworthy, or suitable for investment, primarily because they lack consistent and deep access to their perceived target markets. In short, their order books are lean and their access to markets is limited.

Impact Stories

Coping with climate change in Southern Africa

By the time CTA’s regional flagship project for Southern Africa comes to an end in 2020, around 140,000 small-scale farmers in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi will have adopted a range of climate-smart strategies to help them cope with drought and erratic weather patterns. About 75,000 farmers are benefiting from the bundle of climate-smart agricultural solutions at the end of the first year of implementation.

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Impact story

Since becoming a farmer in 2001, Phineas Muyabi from Chibombo District in Zambia has struggled to produce enough food for his family to eat. Droughts have destroyed his crops and, as a result, his family has had to rely upon food aid. This year, however, Muyabi is benefiting from CTA’s regional flagship project for Southern Africa, ‘Scaling up Climate Smart Agricultural Solutions for Cereal and Livestock Farmers’.

Impact story

A Botswanan start-up is breaking the barriers to digital technologies for rural smallholder farmers. Brastorne Enterprises, a winner of CTA’s 2016 Pitch AgriHack competition, operates a mobile platform called mAgri to improve farmers’ access to information, markets and finance.

Impact story

A project known as MUIIS (Market-led, User-owned ICT4Ag-enabled Information Services), led by the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), links farmers to satellite-based services that help them to increase crop yields. Tips and instructions sent to mobile devices get as specific as ‘spread fertilizer between 5 pm and 7 pm’ or ‘winds expected at 3 pm’. Something farmers say have increased crop yields and contributed to food security.

Press release

CTA awards grants to support blockchain use in agriculture across ACP

CTA has awarded four grants to support the use of blockchain in agriculture across Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP).

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Press release

CTA together with Farm Africa has launched a new project to promote the resilience of smallholder farmers against climate change in Ethiopia’s Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples’ Region (SNNPR). The launch is the third and final of a CTA initiative that supports the scaling of proven climate smart agriculture technologies in Jamaica, Mali and now Ethiopia.

ICT Update

IT solutions are disruptive: they change the way things are working

Interview with Martin Njeru, the Account Director for Cojengo in the East Africa region.

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In order to feed 9 billion people by 2050, sustainable agricultural growth in needed, supporting an agricultural sector which produces enough food, which is inclusive and resilient, and which makes optimal use of innovation and digital solutions. Smallholder and family farmers must play a key role in achieving this. A 80% of the world’s food supply is produced by small-scale and family farmers, yet their full production potential is hardly reached.

Spore

“African agricultural policies have to be climate proofed”

Zambia Country Director for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), Nachilala Nkombo, discusses the role of both the public and private sectors in adapting agricultural value chains in response to the dual challenges of rapid population growth, and climate change.

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Publications

The next generation of farmers: successes and new opportunities

The global population is on track to surpass 9 billion by 2050 and exceed 11 billion by the end of the century. The world’s 500 million smallholder farms produce around 80% of our food and it is they who will have to carry the burden of increasing food production by over 70%. The information in this document was compiled as background reading material for the 53rd Brussels Briefing on The next generation of farmers: successes and opportunities.

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Food safety is linked, directly or indirectly, to the achievement of many of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially those pertaining to ending hunger and poverty, and promoting good health and well-being. Food and nutritional security is realised only when essential elements of a healthy diet are safe to eat. The information in this document was compiled as background reading material for the 52nd Brussels Briefing on Food safety: a critical part of the food system in Africa.

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Towns and cities in the world’s developing countries are growing on an unprecedented scale. In 1960, the global urban population was 34% of the total; by 2014 54% of the total and growing. By 2050, the proportion living in urban areas is expected to reach 66% (UNDESA). Sub-Saharan Africa’s annual urban growth rate is 3.6%, almost double the world average. The information in this document was compiled as background reading material for the 50th Brussels Development Briefing on Growing food in the cities: Successes and new opportunities.

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Globalization and urbanisation have transformed economies and social systems in countries around the world in the past decades. The information in this document was compiled as background reading material for the 48th Brussels Development Briefing on Strengthening rural livelihoods in the face of rapid urbanisation in Africa co-organised by CTA, BMZ/GIZ, ACP Secretariat, European Commission (DG DEVCO) and Concord.

Events