Ethnography in agricultural research: a tool for diagnosing problems and sustaining solutions

In order to meet the future challenges of African agriculture, scientists and policy makers will need to move away from prescriptive measures, to more adaptive ways of understanding and addressing problems based on local capabilities and resources. Ethnographic frameworks and methods are one adaptive tool that researchers can use in parsing out complex situations within the context of local practice and culture. This paper highlights the use of an ethnographic framework called the Livelihoods as Intimate Government (LIG) approach and its application in Ghana and Malawi. The authors demonstrate how without preconceived ideas about what challenges exist, the LIG approach is able to illuminate some of the most pressing needs that affect the livelihoods of rural smallholder farmers. Preconceived notions tend to lead to poor diagnosis of problems, which then results in misplaced solutions and misapplication of funds to implement recommended strategies. Use of LIG sets parameters that are specific to the local context, which promotes development of appropriate policies, and sustainability of food security programs, ensuring that limited funds are used appropriately.Keywords: Ethnography, field methods, Ghana, Malaw

Really effective (for 15% of the men): Lessons in understanding and addressing user needs in climate services from Mali

Climate services have long been held up as development tools with tremendous potential to reduce risk and vulnerability, and build resilience, for agrarian communities in the Global South (Dessai et al., 2009, Fröde et al., 2013, Pervin et al., 2013, USAID Global Climate Change Office, 2014). The ongoing development and refinement of climate service-based tools, such as weather based index insurance, provides opportunities to stabilize and protect people’s livelihoods by establishing new forms of safety nets, strengthening existing safety nets, and supporting the general improvement of risk management mechanisms (Carter et al., 2014, Hess and Syroka, 2005, Jensen et al., 2015, Mburu et al., 2015). For example, climate advisories and information offer opportunities to inform farmer management of climate related risk (Boyd et al., 2013, Carr et al., 2015c, Hansen, 2012, Hellmuth et al., 2011, Ingram et al., 2002), such as by supporting farmer decisions with regard to intensifying production, investing in new technologies, or taking measures to protect their households and livelihoods in the case of adverse predictions (Carr et al., 2015a, Carr et al., 2015c, Hansen, 2012)

Summary Report: Innovative Qualitative Approaches for CIS Monitoring and Evaluation

Climate information services (CIS) for agriculture and development are useful only when farmers have the ability to make changes in their activities and practices based on the information received. This ability is mediated by a wide range of factors and considerations, such as access to appropriate seeds or needed agricultural equipment, or the authority to make decisions about the cultivation of a particular farm plot. Different users of a CIS will have different abilities to act on weather and climate information, and therefore effective CIS design begins with the empirical identification of potential CIS users and their climate information needs as shaped by these mediating factors. At the same time, user expectations of CIS, environmental conditions, and the social and economic factors that shape the utilization of weather and climate information can change during the implementation of a project. To effectively monitor and evaluate CIS therefore requires approaches to monitoring and evaluation (M&E) that identify and analyze these complex factors. This report outlines lessons about CIS monitoring and evaluation drawn from two qualitative pilot assessments of CIS users and their needs in Senegal (Carr et al. 2018) and Rwanda (Onzere et al. 2018). These assessments were conducted by the Humanitarian Response and Development Lab (HURDL) as part of the Climate Information Services Research Initiative (CISRI) funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. The goal of these assessments was to test innovative evaluation methodologies on ongoing programs to develop general lessons that could contribute toward improving the design and evaluation of CIS interventions. Specifically, HURDL tested the utility of the Livelihoods as Intimate Government (LIG) approach (described below) as a means of identifying different users and the factors that shape their different weather and climate information needs, for the Multidisciplinary Working Group (MWG) model in Senegal and the Climate Services for Agriculture Initiative (CSAI) in Rwanda. A growing literature demonstrates that understanding who the potential users of these CIS are, and their needs for weather and climate information, allows for the design of monitoring and evaluation efforts that are aimed at likely impacts. Further, because the potential impacts of climate information are never evenly distributed across a population, better understanding users and their information needs, calibrates monitoring and evaluation to what a significant impact looks like in a particular place or population