h faculty of forestry and nature conservation, sokoine university of agriculture, morogoro, tanzania ABSTRACT African governments have ambitious plans to expand irrigated agriculture, though existing smallholder schemes have largely failed to use land and water sustainably or become profitable. Six government-owned irrigation schemes in Mozambique, Tanzania and Zimbabwe were assessed to identify common policy barriers and opportunities for higher productivity among smallholder farmers. Issues like insecure land tenure systems, unclear institutional arrangements and poor access to markets have contributed to limited profitability. Reform of currently insecure land tenure, strengthening farmer organizations and reforming policies are recommended so that governments step back from scheme management and foster market linkages to enable more profitable irrigated agriculture.

Agricultural productivity can be increased sustainably in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) by reducing crop losses due to insect pest damage. As an alternative to environmentally-damaging chemical pesticides, biological control interventions and botanical pesticides show potential to achieve both high yields and profits. However, synthesized information of their performance and understanding of their adoption among smallholder farmers is limited. Here, 173 studies of biological control interventions and botanical pesticides of insect pests for 35 crops from 20 sub-Saharan countries from 2005 to 2021 were systematically reviewed. Drawing on published datasets, we found that cereals, particularly maize, were the most studied crop (59%). Research on botanical pesticides constituted 32% of the studies, followed by augmentation/introduction biocontrol (29%), and push-pull (21%). Studies evaluating the technical performance of biocontrol interventions dominated (73%), with a regional clustering of push-pull studies in Kenya. Few studies investigated each intervention on each crop type, across different farming contexts and scales, highlighting an urgent need for landscape-scale studies to elucidate land-use impacts on biocontrol effectiveness. Limited evidence also exists on the synergistic effects of biocontrol on multiple ecosystem services and on non-target/beneficial organisms. We found an absence of interdisciplinary studies that addressed the wider indirect benefits of not using chemical pesticides, the social-economic outcomes, and barriers to adoption by farmers, which we argue are necessary to identify pathways to greater adoption and to support policy advocacy of biocontrol interventions in SSA.

Achieving food and nutrition security and ending hunger is a complex and multi-faceted global challenge, which requires urgent attention, particularly in Africa. To eliminate hunger, the continent needs to transition to new sustainable, inclusive, and resilient food systems that deliver nutritious food and a healthy planet for all. This paper discusses challenges and opportunities highlighted during the “Food Systems Transformation to Address the SDGs” session convened by the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) and partners at the 8th World Sustainability Forum (WSF2020) held in September 2020. The paper reflects on how African food systems need to change to achieve the food systems related and interconnected the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). It also presents issues for consideration at the 2021 United Nations Food Systems Summit. Key considerations include (i) the realization that nutrition insecurity is not food insecurity, (ii) the need for Africa to actualize its potential, (iii) the need to demystify policy development processes; (iv) the need to invest in better measurements and indicators; and (v) the need to create nature-based climate-smart solutions

Climate change will put millions more people in Africa at risk of food and nutrition insecurity by 2050. Integrated assessments of food systems tend to be limited by either heavy reliance on models or a lack of information on food and nutrition security. Accordingly, we developed a novel integrated assessment framework that combines models with in-country knowledge and expert academic judgement to explore climate-smart and nutrition-secure food system futures: the integrated Future Estimator for Emissions and Diets (iFEED). Here, we describe iFEED and present its application in Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia. The iFEED process begins with a participatory scenario workshop. In-country stakeholders identify two key drivers of food system change, and from these, four possible scenarios are defined. These scenarios provide the underlying narratives of change to the food system. Integrated modeling of climate change, food production and greenhouse gas emissions is then used to explore nutrition security and climate-smart agriculture outcomes for each scenario. Model results are summarized using calibrated statements—quantitative statements of model outcomes and our confidence in them. These include statements about the way in which different trade futures interact with climate change and domestic production in determining nutrition security at the national level. To understand what the model results mean for food systems, the calibrated statements are expanded upon using implication statements. The implications rely on input from a wide range of academic experts—including agro-ecologists and social scientists. A series of workshops are used to incorporate in-country expertise, identifying any gaps in knowledge and summarizing information for country-level recommendations. iFEED stakeholder champions help throughout by providing in-country expertise and disseminating knowledge to policy makers. iFEED has numerous novel aspects that can be used and developed in future work. It provides information to support evidence-based decisions for a climate-smart and nutrition-secure future. In particular, iFEED: (i) employs novel and inclusive reporting of model results and associated in-country food system activities, with comprehensive reporting of uncertainty; (ii) includes climate change mitigation alongside adaptation measures; and (iii) quantifies future population-level nutrition security, as opposed to simply assessing future production and food security implications.