Climate-resilient agriculture: the pan-African organisation Climate Change Africa Opportunities begins a capacity-building programme in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

True to its mission of strengthening Africa’s resilience to climate disruption, the pan-African and Indigenous organisation Climate Change Africa Opportunities (CCAO) is launching its support project for local and Indigenous women and youth farmers in climate-resilient agriculture in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Rolled out in South Kivu, in the east of the country, the project puts into practice the ambitions set out in the organisation’s 2020-2030 strategic plan.

A project rooted in the 2020-2030 strategic plan

Agriculture is the sector most directly exposed to the effects of climate change, and the one on which the food security of millions of African households depends. This is why CCAO has made the development of climate-smart, climate-resilient agriculture one of the central pillars of its 2020-2030 strategic plan.

The project launched in South Kivu gives concrete form to that commitment. It focuses on smallholder farmers — Indigenous women and young people — whose means of production remain the most vulnerable to climate shocks.

What is climate-resilient agriculture?

Climate-resilient agriculture rests on three complementary pillars, all aimed at strengthening food security:

• Sustainably increasing agricultural production;
• Strengthening the resilience and adaptive capacity of production systems to climate change;
• Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, where this is possible and appropriate.

Contrary to a common assumption, this is not a fixed set of techniques to be applied identically everywhere. It is an approach: selecting and implementing agricultural practices, policies and services that are suited to a given context, in time and space, and combining them so that they work together to maximise synergies and minimise trade-offs.

What works for one group of farmers — because of their location, their culture and their circumstances — may not work for another. Every intervention therefore requires assessing the impacts of an investment against the biophysical, agricultural and socio-economic context of the area concerned.

Overall objective

To contribute to strengthening the resilience of smallholder farmers — Indigenous women and young people — for adaptation to climate change in South Kivu, in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Specific objectives

1. Strengthen smallholder farmers’ adaptive capacity. The aim is to equip them to respond to the additional threats that climate change poses to agricultural production and food security in South Kivu.

2. Strengthen their productive capacity. This objective will be met by promoting new farming techniques and improving access to quality seed, through support for the multiplication of crop varieties that are resistant and adapted to climate change.

A response built with communities

By placing Indigenous women and young people at the centre of its work, CCAO intends to make those who bear the heaviest burden of climate disruption the primary actors of adaptation. This is the condition for the practices introduced to be genuinely owned by communities and to outlast the project itself.