Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is dealing with climate change and its impacts will intensify in the medium term. Higher temperatures, changing rainfall patterns and more frequent and extreme droughts and floods are projected. This has major implications for Africa’s smallholder farmers who support their households and local markets through products produced in less than three hectares of land. Nearly 93% of agriculture in Africa south of the Sahara is currently rainfed and a large share of the rural population is subject to the vagaries of climate to grow crops and support livestock production. Yields for both crops and livestock have stagnated or grown only slowly for decades; as a result, net food imports of basic staples have increased rapidly in line with growing populations and are projected to continue. 

Many studies have found that, compared to historic climate scenarios, climate change will lead to changes in yield and area growth, with overall lower yield growth and therefore larger expansion, higher food prices and therefore lower affordability of food, reduced calorie availability, and growing childhood undernutrition in Africa south of the Sahara. Without solutions, falling crop yields, will push more people into poverty.  An estimated 43 million people in Africa alone could fall below the poverty line by 2030 as a result. The food security challenge will only become more difficult, as the continent will need to produce about 70 percent more food by 2050 to feed an estimated 9 billion people.

Substantial investments in adaptation will be required to maintain current yields and to achieve production and food quality increases to meet demand. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an integrated approach to managing landscapes—cropland, livestock, forests, and fisheries–that address the interlinked challenges of food security and climate change. CSA aims to simultaneously achieve three outcomes of (i) increased productivity; (2) enhanced resilience and (3) reduced emissions. 

While built on existing knowledge, technologies, and principles of sustainable agriculture, CSA is distinct in that it has an explicit focus on addressing climate change. Second, CSA systematically considers the synergies and trade-offs that exist between productivity, adaptation, and mitigation. Practices that have been found to be potentially climate-smart in a wide range of contexts include improved water management. Irrigation is a particularly robust climate smart agricultural (CSA) technology in the semi-arid and arid areas of SSA and is often essential to the deployment of any other CSA technology. Across Africa, there are research and development projects working to help farmers adapt to the challenges associated with climate change.

The Transforming Smallholder Irrigation in Southern Africa consortium in collaboration with the FANRPAN Node Hosting Institution in South Africa – National Agricultural Marketing Council (NAMC), Agriculture Research Council (ARC) South Africa, Common Market for East and Southern Africa (COMESA), the SADC Groundwater Management Institute (GMI); the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR); the International Water Resources Association (IWRA); International Water Management Institute (IWMI); the Water Research Commission (WRC) of South Africa,  the Wine Industry of South Africa), Human Research Council of South Africa (HSRC) and the South African Council for Natural Scientific Professions (SACNASP)have come together to convene a CSA Policy Dialogue ahead of the UN 2023 Water Conference.  The Policy Dialogue provides a unique opportunity for stakeholders from SSA to reflect together and craft messages that will feed into the UN Water Conference deliberations.