Friday, March 29, 2024
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ATI hosts forum to leverage scientific research for agri-food resilience

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Agricultural Transformation Institute in collaboration with global partners hosts an event to identify how Ethiopia’s agriculture practitioners can best improve their livelihood with the ever changing climate incidents, under the backing of research and new scientific results.
The event targeted to improve livelihoods and build agri-food system resilience and adaptive capacity to changing climate through; sharing of science, knowledge, and innovations and climate informed digital agriculture hubs and decision support to address critical gaps in climate information service. Next generation seasonal and sub seasonal forecasts, early warning systems for early action, and climate smarter agriculture technologies and provisions, and promoting large scale core country and cross border adoption was widely touched upon at the event.
The platform also targeted to build a multi actor partnership for delivery-education-research-and extension continuum to anticipate climate risks, enhance preparedness and accelerate prioritization, user centric bundling and uptake of best-bet resilience building and adaptive measure.
Mandefro Nigusse, Director-General of ATI, recalled that the institute had in recent times carried out a series of workshops that identify the way of uplifting the Ethiopian agriculture sector, “The latest collaboration with the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers (CGIAR) is part of the series.”
He said that the latest event is targeted to identify the research results of CGIAR centers, which are 14, and utilize the same for the purpose to build resilience to climate change for the livelihood of smallholder farmers.
“Researches in the country are not as per our demand, so these research centers have huge capacity and information from different actors globally that shall support our agricultural activity. We will then analyze and apply the same to our country and farmers through call centers that we installed,” the Director General stated, adding, “The international research centers have carried out the upstream research identifications to which we shall disseminate to lower level experts. This is vital and when it becomes applicable to the downstream level, it will improve our agricultural activity with resilience for climate change.”
According to Mandefro, disseminating the recommendation for farmers would not be difficult since the platform currently exists. However, coming up with recommendations of science, information and analysis from a strong institution would have an even better improvement to the sector.
Martien Van Nieuwkoop, World Bank Agriculture and Food Global Director, told media that climate smart agriculture is a high priority for the bank in Ethiopia, “We are putting the money, the bank’s USD 1.5 billion in financing, in support of various programs in Ethiopia. We have a major food system resilience project to build climate resilience in agriculture.”
“We are active in the lowland through the lowlands livelihood resilience project. We also are very active in the livestock sector, and agriculture is another project and we also work in active agricultural research and innovation in tandem with the CGIAR and AICCRA project. So we are active on many fronts on agriculture and food systems in Ethiopia,” Martien added.
Regarding the World Bank future strategy, the Global Director said that when it comes to future strategies, their vision is in agriculture, and in the food system that supports healthy people, plants and economy.
“We are conducting activities to make sure that agriculture growth is there and is inclusive. We are building resilience because climate change is unfolding at a very rapid pace and affecting farmers as we speak. So food systems need to become more resilient,” he said, adding, “So how can we get to impact that and also reduce the carbon footprint of agriculture, which is very important to get to a net zero world to support of the of the Paris agreements of the banks projects?”
“To do so, we need a very good dialogue with the Government of Ethiopia. I mean, clear convergence on some of the policy framework and priorities,” he explained.
The meeting was also hosted as part of shaping Ethiopia’s agriculture for greater impact and also in contributing to counteracting measures for challenges faced, and the contribution of the scientific community in CGAIR, which is stated as very crucial.
According to Director General of ATI, similar events are expected to be carried out with different stakeholders including the business community in the near future.

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