28/10/22

It’s time to invest in the continent’s regional organisations

A farmer tends a small herd of cattle by a reservoir in Taré
A farmer tends a small herd of cattle by a reservoir, water is scarce as the river is drying up. Copyright: Ollivier Girard/CIFOR, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Speed read

  • Devasting droughts and floods are ravaging Africa
  • The next major climate summit should priortise climate actions in Africa
  • African countries must cooperate to address the challenges of climate change

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African countries cannot fight climate change acting alone. But Africa’s regional organisations could play a galvanizing role if they had more resources.  

The next major climate summit is just days away.

Devastating drought across the greater Horn of Africaviolent tensions over natural resources in the Sahel and deadly floods across West and Central Africa are all testament to the fact that — in Africa — the climate crisis is already with us, here and now.

African agriculture — nearly all of which is rainfed — is particularly vulnerable to climate change given that temperatures across the continent are expected to rise faster there than anywhere else on earth.

Decades of progress in food security — driven by partnership, policy, investment, and innovation — has now gone into reverse thanks to the triple challenges of conflict, COVID-19 and climate change.

But African institutions are establishing compelling agenda for action – both on climate and food.

They are claiming greater ownership and agency in setting the priorities for investments and projects that deliver a climate-smart future.


Take, for example, the newly ratified African Union Climate Change and Resilient Development Strategy and Action Plan.

This strategy can potentially inspire, guide and coordinate investments in climate action that can benefit more than a billion people across Africa.

But let’s be realistic.

Climate action is only effective and can only sustain itself over the long-term if demand for action comes from communities and governments who prioritise investments in a climate-smart future.

But many countries across Africa have limited resources and face difficult choices and trade-offs. Should climate action come at the expense of health or education?

That is why regional organisations must play a greater role in leading action on the climate and food security across Africa.

African countries should pool resources and act in unison to get more ‘bang for their buck’.

Moreover, many of the climate challenges we face in Africa cross borders. The climate-driven agriculture challenges of the Sahel are shared among the regions neighbouring countries , particularly invasive pests and diseases whose movements are driven by changes in climate patterns that have no frontier.

Similarly in the Horn of Africa, in the Great Lakes region and in Southern Africa, many of the countries within these regions face common climate challenges.

There is a whole kaleidoscope of regional economic, political and sector-specific communities who can set strategy, share knowledge, coordinate finance, and encourage action.

Under the umbrella of the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa ( itself a technical agency serving the Africa Union Commission), several organisations bring together agriculture champions — African scientists, private sector investors and international donor partners — to drive forward new agriculture science, technology and innovation.

They believe African agriculture can lift people from poverty and deliver a more resilient future – if only the continent’s relatively weak and fragmented agricultural research systems are strengthened with common goals and tools.

The West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development (known as CORAF) is the largest of these organizations, working with 23 national agricultural research systems.

CORAF draws in critical partners like Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA) to scale climate-smart agriculture and climate information services to reach millions of farmers.

For instance, CORAF and AICCRA developed the capacity of national organizations to use foresight analysis for climate change, developing response plans for pest and disease outbreaks that spread across regions. Such outbreaks often see almost half of Africa’s crops perish, losing billions in revenue every year.

Together with AICCRA and other partners, CORAF helped design the World Bank’s US$716 million West Africa Food System Resilience Program which works to improve regional monitoring and innovation ecosystems, while speeding up market integration across West Africa, under the leadership of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

Regional organisations have the vision and the expertise to help solve the climate and food security crises. But more often than not, they lack the resources to do so effectively.
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COP27 could commit more support to these organizations because they have proved themselves to be critical levers that speed up implementation of our collective climate commitments.

This should be high on the priority list of African delegates heading to Sharm El-Sheikh in just a few days’ time.

Abdou Tenkouano is executive director of the West and Central Africa Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF).

 Ana Maria Loboguerrero is director of Accelerating Impacts of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA).  

This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Sub-Saharan Africa English desk.