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This brief shows the Poverty and Food Security Minister’s Workshop. it shows their key observations and what they can do.

This presentation was help at a SADC Poverty and Food Security Ministers' Workshop to discuss poverty and food security issues.

This report shows the purpose of the Regional Indicative Strategic Development Plan (RISDP) is to deepen regional integration in  Southern African Development Community (SADC). It provides SADC Member States with a consistent and comprehensive programme of long-term economic and social policies. It also provides the Secretariat and other SADC institutions with a clear view of SADC’s approved economic and social policies and priorities.

The purpose of this document therefore is to develop the ‘results chain’ for the Regional Agricultural Policy (RAP), i.e. to identify and define the policy targets and related indicators for the monitoring and evaluation of implementation of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Regional Agricultural Policy.

Agriculture in the SADC region is the primary source of subsistence, employment and income for 61 percent of the peoples of the region. Despite a diversified natural resource base, overall agricultural growth and productivity have remained low over the past twenty years. The urgent implementation of broad-based programmes to reverse the overall decline in the productivity of the agriculture sector is a central priority in setting SADC Member States on the path of fast economic growth and poverty reduction. The diversity of the region’s farming and livelihood systems presents great challenges to policymakers in formulating sound agriculture development strategies. But, even given this diversity, many countries in the region share similar problems and opportunities. Cooperation in some of these key areas can yield significant benefits – as can greater economic integration by taking advantage of natural comparative advantages.

An important feature of SADC MAPP is the progressive simplification and integration of implementation arrangements and donor funding mechanisms. This is consistent with the Windhoek Declaration (in which SADC governments are encouraged to take strong leadership, and donors exhorted to harmonize and align their assistance through programmatic approach to enhance aid effectiveness and sustainability). This also reflects consistency with global commitment as expressed in the 2005 Paris Declaration. SADC MAPP represents a major shift from the traditional “project financing” (and the consequent fragmented and unsustainable assistance) to modalities which support programmatic approaches. It is anticipated that funding mechanisms will gradually converge towards a common basket-funding mechanism in accordance with satisfactory fiduciary and associated financial procedures and management capacities.

This review shows a Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation.

Food production is key to achieving food security in the drylands of sub-Saharan Africa. Since agricultural productivity is limited, however, due to inherent agro-ecological constraints and land degradation, sustainable agricultural intensification has been widely discussed as an opportunity for improving food security and reducing vulnerability. Yet vulnerability determinants are distributed heterogeneously in the drylands of sub-Saharan Africa and sustainable intensification cannot be achieved everywhere in cost-effective and efficient ways. To better understand the heterogeneity of farming systems’ vulnerability in order to support decision making at regional scales, we present archetypes, i.e. socio-ecological patterns, of farming systems’ vulnerability in the drylands of sub-Saharan Africa and reveal their nestedness. We quantitatively indicated the most relevant farming systems’ properties at a sub-national resolution. These factors included water availability, agro-ecological potential, erosion sensitivity, population pressure, urbanisation, remoteness, governance, income and undernourishment. Cluster analysis revealed eight broad archetypes of vulnerability across all drylands of sub-Saharan Africa. The broad archetype representing better governance and highest remoteness in extremely dry and resource-constrained regions encompassed the largest area share (19%), mainly indicated in western Africa. Moreover, six nested archetypes were identified within those regions with better agropotential and prevalent agricultural livelihoods. Among these patterns, the nested archetype depicting regions with highest erosion sensitivity, severe undernourishment and lower agropotential represented the largest population (30%) and area (28%) share, mainly found in the Sahel region. The nested archetype indicating medium undernourishment, better governance and lowest erosion sensitivity showed particular potential for sustainable agricultural intensification, mainly in western and some parts of southeastern and eastern Africa. Insights into the nestedness of archetypes allowed a more differentiated discussion of vulnerability and sustainable intensification opportunities, enhancing the evaluation of key interlinkages between land management and food security. The archetypes may support the transfer of successful intensification strategies based on similarities among the drylands in sub-Saharan Africa.

Southern African Agriculture and Climate Change: A Comprehensive Analysis examines the food security threats facing eight of the countries that make up southern Africa — Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe — and explores how climate change will increase the efforts needed to achieve sustainable food security throughout the region. Southern Africa’s population is expected to grow at least through mid-century. The region will also see income growth. Both will put increased pressure on the natural resources needed to produce food, and climate change makes the challenges greater. Southern Africa is already experiencing rising temperatures, shifting precipitation patterns, and increasing extreme events. Without attention to adaptation, the poor will suffer.

Cassava is the second-most important staple food crop after maize in Malawi. The availability of different varieties of cassava allow for both commercial use and household consumption of cassava to hedge against food insecurity. Malawi is prone to drought due to climate change vulnerability, poor agricultural practices and high population growth making cassava, a drought-resistant crop, an attrac- tive option.

This study sets out to answer the question of whether cassava is, indeed, the 21st century crop for smallholders. The focus lies on smallholder production sys- tems in Nkhotakota District on the shores of Lake Malawi and in the rural vicinity of Lilongwe, the capital city. A nexus between the household asset endowments of smallholder farmers and their participation in the value chain was examined to identify root causes of the supply-demand mismatch and to formulate recom- mendations for effective value chain development. A partial value chain analysis has been conducted to account for the participation of smallholders in the value chain. We chose a structural analysis over an economic analysis, as prices are high- ly volatile in the informal markets of Malawi and notoriously difficult to solicit from actors. Since the responsibility for the production of food and cash crops falls broadly along gender lines within a household, gender aspects take a central role in our research. All our instruments included gender differentiated elements.

Improving agricultural water productivity, under rainfed or irrigated conditions, holds significant scope for addressing climate change vulnerability. It also offers adaptation capacity needs as well as water and food security in the southern African region. In this study, evidence for climate change impacts and adaptation strategies in rainfed agricultural systems is explored through modeling predictions of crop yield, soil moisture and excess water for potential harvesting. The study specifically presents the results of climate change impacts under rainfed conditions for ma- ize, sorghum and sunflower using soil-water-crop model simulations, integrated based on daily inputs of rainfall and evapotranspiration disaggregated from GCM scenarios. The research targets a vast farming region dominated by heavy clay soils where rainfed agriculture is a dominant prac- tice. The potential for improving soil water productivity and improved water harvesting have been explored as ways of climate change mitigation and adaptation measures. This can be utilized to explore and design appropriate conservation agriculture and adaptation practices in similar agro-ecological environments, and create opportunities for outscaling for much wider areas. The results of this study can suggest the need for possible policy refinements towards reducing vulne- rability and adaptation to climate change in rainfed farming systems.