Second Africa Drylands Week

The second Africa Drylands Week was held three years after the first one held in Dakar, Senegal in 2011. The participants reviewed successes as well as challenges facing drylands development, including sustainable land management and resilience to climate change related risks.

In particular, they reviewed the tremendous advances in land regeneration that have already been made by millions of farm families in the Sahel, and in Eastern and Southern Africa, by applying the principles of Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) of trees on their croplands, and by communities in regenerating their forest and grazing lands through Assisted Natural Regeneration (ANR). It was noted that these practices have created multiple benefits in food security, resilience and adaptation to climate change, and the restoration of the land and soils. It was also noted that these Ever-Green Agriculture practices are now widely recognized as Foundational Practices that can be applied universally in the drylands because they do not involve any cash investment by the farmers, and are complementary to all other improved agriculture and natural resource management practices.

The meeting also took note of the recent commitment of the Heads of State to ensure that 30% more households in Africa are resilient to climate change related risks (Malabo Decision, June 2014).

Participants noted the launch of the AU-NEPAD-INGO African Climate Smart Agriculture Alliance aligned with the new vision of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) Results Framework, which envisages 25 million farmers in Africa practicing Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA) during the next ten years (25 by 25 vision).