Particularly Africa is affected by climate change. Even now, extreme weather events such as droughts and flooding are already occurring more frequently and with greater severity than in the past. Water shortages, heat and increasingly diseases result. The consequences are lower - or even total loss of - crop and livestock yields. Enhancing the capacity of the most vulnerable poor to adapt to climate change is going to be one of the main issues technical development cooperation is facing in the near future.

However, the changes differ locally and depend on natural conditions such as species and variety of crop and cropping system, but also on political and socio-cultural factors. A precise understanding of these factors as well as their local and regional impact is essential to manage against climate change.

To guarantee this and to develop measures of adaptation to climate change, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) assigned the Advisory Service on Agricultural Research for Development (BEAF) of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) with the design of the priority research area “Adaptation of African Agriculture to Climate Change”. Already in summer 2007 the call for proposals started and led to the submission of 18 project suggestions. Eight of these were selected after close examination and expert appraisal. During 2008 another project was accepted.

Five international agricultural research institutes (CIP, ICRISAT, IFPRI, ILRI, IWMI), two German universities (Göttingen, Hohenheim) and one of the Leibniz centres (ZALF) have received research funding totalling EUR 10 million for the programme, which is scheduled to run for three years.

The research priority is designed interdisciplinary and multi-institutional. There is a manifold network between the participating institutes and universities professional tasks range from climatology over classical agricultural disciplines - cropping systems, plant breeding, grazing management and agroforestry - to water management and policy research. Regional focuses are the Sahel belt countries in West Africa with Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Ghana as well as Eastern Africa, here in particular Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Mozambique and Zambia.

One of the main issues of the research priority is to involve local stakeholders to enhance their capacity as well as to feed their knowledge into the research approach. At least two non-governmental organizations, famer associations or National Agricultural Research Centres are participating in each project to assure an appropriate connection to the persons concerned.

Further information

• List of funded projects
  en-list-of-funded-projects-climate-change-2009-05.pdf, 0,09 MB (English)
• Factsheet climate change
  gtz2009-6-en-factsheet-klimaprojekte.pdf, 0,27 MB (English)
• Brochure "Climate Change and Agriculture - Threats and Opportunities", 2008
  en-gtz-climate-agriculture.pdf, 3,31 MB (English)