As rural poverty deepens over much of Sub-Saharan Africa, smallholder transformation has become more urgent than ever before. A majority of rural people derive their livelihoods from agriculture, hence the urgent need for transforming the sector. The South African government launched a comprehensive land reform programme at the dawn of democracy in the country on the assumption that constraints on land size would be eliminated to make room for a more inclusive agricultural economy.

The brief talks about the emerging insights from a Climate-Smart Village in Southern Shan State, Myanmar. It documents a range of coping strategies that help farmers deal with impacts of climate change.

Many development countries are currently undergoing major demographic shifts as the percentage of young people of the total population rapidly increases. This shift is associated with high rates of migration, unemployment and instability. In policy discourses, engaging youth in commercial agricultural is often presented as a measure to control or even counter these trends. In Uganda, a country with one of the youngest populations in the world, we investigated whether young people themselves see a career in farming as an option.

Participatory rangeland management (PRM) was developed by ILRI and partners in Ethiopia, piloted and then upscaled. PRM improves the productivity of rangelands and access to resources for local rangelands users (communities). In 2018, the European Union invested Euro 1.5 million in the Piloting of PRM Project in Baringo County, Kenya and six shared grazing lands in Tanzania (targeting 450,000 pastoralists and agropastoralists). In 2020/21 PRM is being upscaled through a USD 30 million investment on 8.8 million hectares in Ethiopia.

This paper explores the economic implications of fall armyworm (FAW) and its management strategies by exploiting exogenous variation in FAW exposure amongst households in southern Ethiopia. We find that FAW exposure affects maize yield and sales negatively, but not consumption. Furthermore, we find evidence of crowding-in and intensification of insecticide use in response to FAW exposure. We also find suggestive evidence that existing extension service arrangements lack the capacity to deal with emerging threats such as FAW.

Climate change adaptation is dependent on access to a number of resources, including information, land, financing, and mobility. Successful climate change adaptation, therefore, will need to integrate an understanding of gender and take action on it, including an appreciation for the importance of women in climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies. This paper undertakes a review of the policies and legal frameworks for gender and climate change, including key UNFCCC decisions on gender and climate change and gender mainstreaming in National Adaptation Planning process.

This report provides an overview of the types and sources of planting material used by 1315 farmers in Uganda and Tanzania. The data was collected from six dristricts; Luwero and Mbarara in Uganda and Meru, Moshi, Bukoba and Rungwe in Tanzania. Nearly all farmers who participated in the study used suckers which they obtained them from their own farms or from friends and neighbours. Suckers are more readily available, exchanged for free or affordable and accessible to farmers.

Multiple lines of evidence call for the use of locally-relevant strategies to guide and support sustainable agricultural intensification while improving development and conservation outcomes. The goal of this study was to identify the ecosystem services from natural and agricultural systems to achieve this aim in the Barotse Floodplain of Zambia. Our methodology utilized a gender-sensitive ecosystem services approach, whereby local knowledge from women and men was harnessed to understand which services and their sources are important.