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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.

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.

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.

Sustainability of rain-fed farming systems under climate variability and change conditions is a key concern for policy and adaptation planning processes to improve food and nutrition security. The challenge is to improve farming and tillage practices to enhance soil moisture availability and harvest excess runoff thereby making the farming systems more reliable and resilient to unpredictable risks of climate change and variability. In this short manuscript, an assessment of climate change impact on the agricultural water availability for rainfed systems in southern Africa is discussed through a pilot project conducted recently as part of climate change adaptation integrated modeling of crop-climate-soil systems. We consider the Pandamatenga plains in north-eastern Botswana, which was undertaken with the main indicators of crop yield impact with respect to soil water availability and excess runoff harvesting potential, for the current climatology (1971-2000) and projected over the coming decades up to the 2050s. The indicators of rainfed practices of growing maize, sorghum and sunflower are discussed, which are likely influenced not only by climate, but also the response requiring local and regional adaptation investments for improved food security and increase productivity. The manuscript recommends technical and policy interventions for incorporating climate change adaptation practices, with the view to outscale to national and possibly regional agricultural development planning processes.

This presentation discusses enhancing evidence based climate change adaptation research and policy for agriculture in southern Africa.

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.

This Literature Review is the rst step towards a comparative assessment of Weather Index Insurance (WII) in the agricultural sector in East and Southern Africa. The second step involves visits to four countries (Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and Zambia) covered by the Climate Smart Agriculture Programme (Vuna) funded by DFID, which have weather index insurance programmes. The visits will allow collection of information on the recent performance of those programs and obtain the perceptions of key stakeholders on lessons learned, constraints, sustainability, and potential of those insurance programmes to address issues related to strengthening the resilience of agricultural systems to weather risk. The ndings from both stages will be summarised in an Evidence and Learning Report focussing on the determinants of success or failure of the programmes under implementation.

This paper summarizes the main ndings of the global experience on the implementation of WII specically the lessons learned on the mechanics of the index, pro tability, bundling, impacts, and potential role in climate change adaptation. It also discusses the challenges of current pilot projects in East and Southern Africa, wherever secondary information is available.

Based on the Vuna report “Comparative Assessment of Selected Agricultural Weather Index Insurance Strategies in Sub-Saharan Africa,” by Carlos E. Arce (August 2016).