In Sub-Saharan Africa, widespread poverty and inequality are compounded by a growing population, climate change, environmental fragility and weak social capital. The COVID-19 pandemic further jeopardizes people’s lives and livelihoods.

Despite agriculture being a mainstay of these economies, extreme poverty and malnutrition remains more prevalent amongst rural and pastoralist communities. Women and girls are disproportionately undernourished and lack ownership of productive assets. Inappropriate farming practices and heavy reliance on wood fuel are accelerating environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, and soil depletion. Combined with shifting weather patterns, these factors expand the likelihood of pest invasions, leaving people vulnerable to natural threats and pandemics such as COVID 19. Access to productive and sustainable agricultural technologies, information, and basic services such as waste management and electricity is patchy and unequal. Moreover, civil society often lacks the capacity to engage in local and national policy processes and so inadvertently reinforce poor service delivery, rural-urban divides, and weak government accountability.

Outcome 1: Resilient livelihoods

Improvement in the resilience, food security and incomes of vulnerable and marginalized small-scale producers through the use of ecological and innovative approaches.

(Responsibility: Biovision and CEAS)

Outcome 2: Sustainable communal services

Improved and affordable access to waste management and sustainable energy at village and small town levels increase penetration rate of basic services.
(Responsibility: CEAS)

Outcome 3: Enhanced capacities

CSOs, research institutions, SMEs and citizens are enabled to play their full role in inclusive and sustainable development.

(Responsibility: Biovision and CEAS)

Outcome 4: Enabling environment

Coherent policies, improved funding and favorable institutional framework for scaling up agroe-ecological innovations to enable a sustainability transformation of the food system.

(Responsibility: Biovision; contributions by CEAS)

Outcome 5: Raising awareness in Switzerland

People living in Switzerland and institutions engage for achieving the 2030 Agenda and its SDGs as part of a global effort contributing to peace, sustainable development, security and wellbeing. (for this outcome no SDC-program contribution must be used).
(Responsibility: Biovision)

Principaux résultats attendus:  

·   Biovision organized an exchange with HEKS and Swisscontact on outcome monitoring systems, with co-funding from Mercator Foundation. The results of this learning process have been consolidated within a workshop at NADEL.

·  CEAS organized a joint learning event on Innovation for Development Cooperation with the Essential tech Centre of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), which attracted 50 practitioners and researches. The results are electronically shared to a community of practice and available online as per the institution’s open source policy).

Principaux résultats antérieurs:  

(Note: Biovision and CEAS are partner organisations of SDC, they newly joint forces in an Alliance)

Key results Biovision:

·  Promoted agro-ecological (AE) innovations like push-pull-technology in collaboration with research institutes and private sector; scaling out in Ethiopia, Malawi, Rwanda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. 35’000 households adopted ecological innovations for improved food security.

·  Awareness on ecological practices and agrifood-environment nexus raised among 1 million people.

·  Weekly Organic Farmer Radio reaching 4 million people.

·  2 globally important national political processes developed and influenced: (i) Climate Smart Agriculture implementation platform and (ii) National Determined Contribution revision process in Kenia.

· Contribution via events, bilateral meetings and NGO alliances to negotiations of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) of UNFCCC culminating in the adoption of the Koronivia Joint Work on Agriculture at COP23 fostering the discourse in AE.

Phase 3 01.01.2021 - 31.12.2022   (Completed)