This Technical Assistance aims to build the capacity of women actors in Nigeria’s agriculture sector. Canada’s Climate Action Africa (CAA) will support the African Food Changemakers (AFC) in the implementation of a program developed by AFC, titled ‘Building Resilience Against Climate and Environmental Shocks’. This programme helps agribusinesses develop the skills, tools, knowledge and support required to adapt to the challenges posed by climate change and environmental shocks through climate-smart practices, monitoring and evaluation, and livelihood diversification. The program will prioritize women-led agribusiness.
Context
Food systems in Nigeria are fragile and face disruptions from shocks and stresses like climate and environmental change, leading to increasing food insecurity in Africa’s most populous country (Nigeria). Climate change represents a major threat to Nigeria achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The impact of climate change includes loss of employment, low production yields, high rates of wastage, higher costs of food and shortages and, ultimately, food insecurity. Women play vital roles in the Nigerian agricultural landscape and are more vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change.
Nigeria updated its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) in 2021, which outlines plans to increase renewable energy use, improve energy efficiency, and promote sustainable agriculture and forestry practices.
African Food Changemakers’ (AFC) goal is to build the capacity of women actors in Nigeria’s agriculture sector. Despite movements in policy and country knowledge-building efforts – including a revised National Climate Change Policy 2021 – 2030, a 2022 workshop hosted by The Nigeria Agribusiness Group (NABG) and other organisations undertaking climate actions – women’s participation and leadership in climate action is still inadequate. Hence, AFC sees the need to address this gap by building the capacity of women in the agricultural sector.
Goal of the Technical Assistance
- The focus of this technical assistance is to design and pilot a diagnostic tool and climate change knowledge curriculum.
- The diagnostic tool will be designed to create a baseline of information tracking the climate adaptation journey.
CAA Technical Assistance
The technical assistance (TA) will seek to strengthen the capacity and knowledge of 100-150 women-led agribusiness beneficiaries led by Landell Mills.
The technical assistance addresses this priority area by building the capacity of the women-led agribusiness target group to assess, respond, adapt and build resilience to climate change. This intervention will partner with women-led and women-focused business groups, cooperative societies and trade associations to reach and engage women beneficiaries in the program. The program will also prioritize the engagement of women facilitators, trainers and mentors. Key activities include:
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- The refinement and finalization of a climate diagnostic tool that would help assess levels of climate awareness, adaptation strategies, individual capability and organizational needs.
- The provision of both physical and online training facilitation and climate adaptation strategies for women-led agribusiness agripreneurs to address the interlinked challenges of food security and climate change. Train a select group of women from the 100-150 women agribusinesses to function as CSA Champions and transfer knowledge to the wider community.
- The development of monitoring and evaluation, and data gathering tools that participants would deploy in their business models to track the climate adaptation journey and its impact on their operations and livelihoods.
