Positioning agricultural research for effective contribution to climate change in Sub-Saharan Africa: enhancing 'knowledge to action' and 'action to knowledge'

Abstract

Africa’s development is and will continue to be greatly affected by the potential threats of climate change, leading to changes in the continent’s development trajectory including disruption of the food systems. The expected changes are complicated by the pursuit of divergent interests by social groups, private sector and the governments operating at different levels. In this review paper, we seek to provide a framework for promoting “actionable knowledge” on climate change at national, regional and global scales. Climate change negotiations and collective action form the international level domain. Divergent interests of social groups, private sector and governments constitute the national domain. In the climate change realm, it is obvious that interactions and feedbacks between ‘internal’ and ‘external’ domains are more inclined towards shaping dynamics within the African domain. The neutrality and carbon offsetting myth, carbon financing mechanisms, technology transfer, capacity building, and now reduced emissions from deforestation and ecosystem degradation (REDD) are differently perceived at the interface of the internal and external domains. The focus of this paper is not internal-external domains’ interface, but how agricultural education can be enhanced so that knowledge generated can effectively be used by different sub-units within the internal domain in translating climate change adaptation into reality. How that translation should be done is a challenge that developing country grapple with, especially when external sub-units use trade and funding to pull the ‘strings’. In such a scenario, Africa, as an internal domain, has its interests influenced by the sub-units of the external domains. If we consider countries as units in the internal domain, governments as well as being a facilitator and implementer, become principal agents in organizing and pushing for the mainstreaming of adaptation mechanisms for climate change. These roles of government are complicated by the urgency of meeting short-term requirements vis-à-vis a large-scale longerterm donor climate change adaptation. Could agricultural research play a bridging role in ensuring that sub-units within the internal domain have positive feedbacks that promote climate change adaptation? This paper focuses on how agricultural education can be refocused and restructured so as to build on what we already know and build a strong foundation for future learning