Summary Report of CIS/CSA training and technical assistance provided under AICCRA Zambia

AICCRA Zambia has conducted several trainings to increase the number of beneficiaries accessing and using enhanced climate information services and climate smart agriculture innovations. A total of 306 (41% females) participated in the CSA CIS trainings in 2022 (Figure 1). Majority of the trainings (except for the internship innovation programme) were one off (short term) training events targeting researchers, producers, agribusinesses, and policy makers. The trainings included gender and social inclusion specially aimed at increasing the number of women beneficiaries accessing enhanced climate information services and climate smart agriculture technologies. The project created a multistakeholder platform bringing together various stakeholders from different sectors such as the universities and research institutions, government, non governmental organizations, including CGIAR center and many others. This report summarizes some of the trainings that were conducted during the year under review

Concept Note: Aquaculture working group for CIS delivery and CSA scaling in Zambia

This concept note describes the strategy for setting up a Community of Practice (CoP) for Climate Information Services (CIS) delivery and climate-smart agriculture (CSA) Scaling for Zambia for Integrated agriculture aquaculture systems under the AICCRA project in Zambia. This document gives a background to climate change issues in the aquaculture sector in Zambia. It also explains what the bundle seeks to achieve, the objective of the CoP, its membership, expected results, and how the CoP will be set up

AICCRA project accelerates CSA/CIS scaling through agribusiness partnerships in Zambia

AICCRA Zambia project led by IWMI enters into a strategic partnership with ACDI/VOCA (https://www.acdivoca.org/about/at-a-glance/) (Accelerator video to SMEs: https://youtu.be/mTXpagVFhxA; Accelerator launch video: https://youtu.be/Ogzr7pAmNgs). This has created a wide stakeholder dialogue space for the private and public sectors to find possible partnership models for addressing problems of climate change affecting water and food security situation in the country. Five SME partnerships were awarded accelerator grants aimed at increasing access to climate information services to over 300,000 farmers in Zambia by 2023

Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Plan for AICCRA Zambia

This Monitoring and Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Plan for the AICCRA project is a management tool that will help the project track and assess progress and achievements and make adjustments if necessary to ensure that the project can achieve its objectives intended results. The purpose of this MEL plan is: (i) to explain how the project will be monitored to determine whether the intended results are being achieved; (ii) to define the project data sources that will be used to verify the results achieved; (iii) to establish a process to alert implementers and stakeholders of any problems in project implementation and provide the basis for making any needed adjustments; and (iv) to describe information products such as reports and other written documentation that the project will produce and disseminate to its stakeholders, internal and external audiences

AICCRA Zambia Beneficiary Report

AICCRA Zambia partnered with agribusiness-based small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to increase access to climate information services for over 300,000 farmers negatively impacted by the effects of climate change. This partnership has resulted in 118,746 (36% women) smallholder farmers accessing and adopting climate smart agriculture technologies in the following agriculture value chains: off-grid solar irrigation; integrated aquaculture agriculture system; climate-smart seed varieties; and integrated mixed chicken/goats–legume system

AICCRA Country Scaling Vision: Zambia

AICCRA Zambia emphasizes integrating climate information services (CIS) into the CSA bundles as it is a necessary condition to enhance the scaling to be best-fitted to specific contexts, thereby strengthening the relevance of the CSA-CIS bundles. Adaptive scaling approach is selected for such best-fit and relevance to the contexts while enabling the agri-food system transformation as illustrated in Figure 1. Adaptive scaling is ˝processes where diverse actors-networks cooperate, feed off, adapt to, support, compete and interact with each other to form mechanisms and undertake the niche, reach, accelerate and transform functions of the scaling ecosystem˝ (adapted from IWMI, 2021). In the niche, actor networks identify the applicability of the innovation, respond to systemic barriers and opportunities, and adapt the innovation to new contexts

The impacts of covid-19 on gender dynamics and power relations among men and women involved in cross border fish trade in Zambia and Malawi

This paper explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the measures to mitigate it on gender dynamics and power relations among men and women involved in cross border fish trade in Zambia and Malawi and the ensuing policy implications to support the fisheries value chain. The paper is based on qualitative and quantitative data collected in Zambia and Malawi in October and November 2021. We conducted quantitative surveys implemented the Cognitive Edge Sensemaker Tool and the Emergency Market Mapping and Analysis toolkit (EMMA to understand the dynamics of cross border fish trade before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. A social relations approach, focusing on gender relations, was used to analyze the data. Findings suggest that women cross-border fish traders are caught up in a complex web of networks and relationships that are disempowering to them. Some measures put in place to mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic lacked an understanding of the historical perspective and dynamics of women in fish trading communities further marginalizing men and women cross border fish traders. Some measures exacerbated hidden violence against women and overt forms of violence against men. Since most of the violence occur across state boundaries, there is a need for inter-country coordination to ensure that the rights of women and men cross border fish traders are protected. Policy measures could include educating police officers for even-handedness when enforcing COVID-19 rules and providing mechanisms for reporting abusive practices