Implementing Climate-Smart Agriculture: Innovation, Inclusivity and Capacity-Building

This webinar focusses on AFRICAP’s research into CSA implementation in Tanzania, featuring presentations by University of Leeds researchers

There is significant focus on achieving and upscaling climate-smart agriculture (CSA), with particular emphasis on delivering benefits to smallholder farmers. Despite the high level of knowledge around what technologies and practises work on the ground, there is poor understanding of how smallholder farmers access beneficial outcomes, and how to effectively implement CSA at scale.

This webinar focusses on AFRICAP’s research into CSA implementation in Tanzania, featuring presentations by University of Leeds researchers Dr Susannah Sallu, Dr Harriet Smith, and Marta Gaworek-Michalczenia. Drawing on empirical research and ongoing collaborative work with project partners in Tanzania, speakers will discuss some of the approaches and outcomes of implementing CSA, explore who does and does not benefit from programme implementation and why, and raise questions about the viability of and challenges with global ambitions to upscale CSA.

Following research presentations, seminar discussants Dr John Recha (Scientist for the CGIAR research programme on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security, International Livestock Research Institute) and Mr Prosper Makundi (Acting Head of Environment Management Unit, Ministry of Agriculture, Tanzania) will provide a reflective response, situating AFRICAP’s research within the broader ambitions for upscaling Climate-Smart Agriculture across East and Southern Africa as well as the national policy context in Tanzania.

The event will close with a Q&A, facilitated by the event chair Ms. Sithembile Mwamakamba (Director of Policy Research and Analysis at Food and Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network, FANRPAN).

For more GCRF-AFRICAP seminars on food systems and climate resilience in sub-Saharan Africa, visit the GCRF-AFRICAP events page.

Register to attend Implementing Climate-Smart Agriculture: Innovation, Inclusivity and Capacity-Building on Thursday 25 March from 12:00 – 13:30 (GMT).

Chair

• Sithembile Mwamakamba, Director of Policy Research and Analysis at Food and Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network, FANRPAN

Discussants 

• Mr Aradius Kategano, Principal Agriculture Officer, Crop Monitoring and Early Warning Unit, Department of National Food Security, Ministry of Agriculture, Tanzania
• Dr John Recha, Scientist, International Livestock Research Institute, CGIAR research programme on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS)

Speakers

Dr Susannah Sallu, Associate Professor of Environment Development, University of Leeds 

Susannah is an Associate Professor in Environment Development at the University of Leeds and is the Tanzania country coordinator for GCRF-AFRICAP, working closely with the Economic & Social Research Foundation (ESRF) to implement the project in Tanzania. Susannah is an interdisciplinary scientist with expertise on rural livelihood and landscape resilience. Much of her recent research focuses on the design, implementation and impact of environment-development and resilience-building intervention. Susannah has 20 years experience working in Tanzania. Read more.

Dr Harriet Smith, Post-doctoral Research Fellow, University of Leeds

Harriet is an interdisciplinary environmental scientist, working as a Research Fellow on the GCRF-AFRICAP programme. Her research focusses on understanding how farmers adapt to climate change, by examining how they learn and use different agricultural practices. In the context of Agricultural Development Programmes in Tanzania, her work explores how agricultural innovation happens, to examine who has access to, and is able to benefit from Development Programmes, who does not, and why. Read more.

Marta Gaworek-Michalczenia, PhD Researcher, School of Earth & Environment, University of Leeds

Marta is a postgraduate researcher in the School of Earth & Environment at the University of Leeds. She is in the final stages of her PhD research which has collaborated with NGO partners to examine interactions between multiple interventions, including CSA, being implemented in rural Tanzania. Marta is trained in both natural and social science and uses interdisciplinary mixed method approaches to draw inferences between intervention impacts and resilience of rural livelihoods. Read more. 

**This event has been postponed until 31 March 2021 with respect for the 14-day period of mourning for Tanzania's late President John Magufuli.