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Food Security & Agroecology

 

Achieving sustainable agri-food systems relies on generating new knowledge rooted in agro-ecological principles. This entails integrating scientific and local knowledge, strengthening African capacities, and advocating for evidence-based policies. While Regional Centres of Excellence offer a pathway to contribute to this transformative process, several challenges must be navigated:

  • Strengthening Evidence Production: Agroecology's potential contributions are recognized, but challenges remain in enhancing data collection and advocacy efforts to amplify impact.
  • Fostering Collaboration: Mobilizing diverse stakeholders, including universities, private sectors, and civil society actors, is crucial for producing innovative knowledge.
  • Building Competencies: Addressing complex ecological and social challenges requires developing new research agendas and tailored curricula. Networking between RCoEs and forging partnerships offer avenues to build these competencies.
  • Accessing Financial Resources: African research organizations face hurdles in accessing necessary financial resources to enhance infrastructure and capabilities.

Regional Centres of Excellence

The Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) will coordinate the efforts of selected RCoEs in the agri-food domain to address its challenges.

Available Resources
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Livestock density (areas of concern)
Given the massive scale of livestock production systems, it is unlikely that any other single human activity has a larger environmental impact on the terrestrial land mass of the planet. As the world’...
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Soil Organic Carbon
Soil organic carbon (SOC) is the carbon that remains in the soil after partial decomposition of any material produced by living organisms. It constitutes a key element of the global carbon cycle throu...
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Below ground biomass carbon
Roots are a long term and stable carbon sink, accounting for about 0.4 of the above ground biomass across biogeographical regions. Well established and developed root systems provide various ecosystem...
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Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI-3)
Droughts affect millions of people in the world each year and have long-lasting socioeconomic impacts. They can occur over most parts of the world, even in wet and humid regions, and can profoundly im...
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Risk of Drought Impact for Agriculture (RDrI-Agri)
Droughts affect millions of people in the world each year and have long-lasting socioeconomic impacts. They can occur over most parts of the world, even in wet and humid regions, and can profoundly im...
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Active Fire anomaly from MODIS/FIRMS
Vegetation fires have become a major concern in Africa because of their negative impacts on the environment and on human welfare. Uncontrolled (and un-prescribed) wildfires cause forest and vegetation...
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Soil Moisture Anomaly (SMA)
Agricultural drought events can affect large regions across the world. Soil moisture (or soil water content) is an important variable for plant growth, and - together with precipitation and evapotrans...
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Crop Mapping for GEOGLAM Country Level Support - Uganda
Crop conditions monitoring is highly relevant for food security early warning and response planning in food insecure areas of the world. GEOGLAM is the Group on Earth Observations' Global Agricultural...
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Crop Mapping for GEOGLAM Country Level Support - Tanzania
Crop conditions monitoring is highly relevant for food security early warning and response planning in food insecure areas of the world. GEOGLAM is the Group on Earth Observations' Global Agricultural...
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Crop Mapping for GEOGLAM Country Level Support - Kenya
Crop conditions monitoring is highly relevant for food security early warning and response planning in food insecure areas of the world. GEOGLAM is the Group on Earth Observations' Global Agricultural...
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Land Productivity Dynamics in Sahel
Humans need increasingly more biomass for food, fodder, fiber and energy. In Africa, circa 22% of the vegetated land surface showed a decline or unstable land productivity between 1999 and 2013. Persi...
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Africa Land Surface Forms
The land surface forms were identified using the method developed by the Missouri Resource Assessment Partnership (MoRAP). The MoRAP method is an automated land surface form classification based on Ha...
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African Isobioclimates
Climate - in terms of temperature, precipitation and continentality - is a primary determinant in the distribution of vegetation. Salvador Rivas-Martinez and Salvador Rivas-Saenz (2004) developed a gl...
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Soil Condition Risk
Soil condition indicates whether soil can perform basic functions to benefit human use and ecosystems alike. This indicator is based on soil organic carbon (SOC) content. SOC is the main component of ...
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Pollination Risk
This indicator assesses whether there is enough natural habitat surrounding cropland to support natural pollination. Up to two-thirds of all crops require some degree of animal pollination to reach th...
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