AfriCAN climate knowledge sharing workshop and award ceremony - Second edition

***Background
African countries have been exposed to the vagary of climate change, while facing the challenges of poverty eradication. Knowledge on integrated approaches, such as evergreen agriculture, with strengthening rural institutions and enhancing the role of women in decision making processes, is most sought out to enable smallholders to adapt to and mitigate climate change and at the same time to improve livelihoods. Currently, some practices are already implemented by small groups and individuals and may be successful in some isolated cases, but the information on their experiences is often too scattered to implement wider dissemination and to convince the governments to invest in enabling policy environment for scaling up. Knowledge sharing of integrated approaches on climate change along with sensitization of development outcome pathways to translate knowledge into action among stakeholders and policy makers is critical to achieve a quantum leap for development goals.

***AfriCAN Climate
AfriCAN Climate is a project co-financed by the European Commission within the 7th Framework Programme. The project aims to support Africa in the process of adapting to and mitigating climate change, by bridging the gap between research and action. This is achieved through the development of a dynamic web platform, bringing together an active network of European and African researchers and communication experts. The anticipated effect is an increased uptake of research results and their translation into practical projects that will have a direct impact on people's lives. The AfriCAN Climate portal (www.africanclimate.net) targets a wide variety of stakeholders: researchers, field practitioners, project developers, development partners, NGOs, local/national governments and farmers organizations.
The project also supports awards in recognition of excellence: the AfriCAN Climate Awards. On this occasion, AfriCAN Climate will present the second Award, themed on Good Practice for Climate Change Adaptation and Mitigation. The winning initiative will receive an honorary certificate.

***Objectives of the event and expected outcomes
The workshop plans to showcase and share best integrated approaches of climate change adaptation and mitigation practiced in Africa promoted by partners, and to discuss how knowledge platforms help African farmers and residents to better adopt climate change mitigation and adaptation technologies. The meeting will bring together key stakeholders in research, policy and development sectors to share their knowledge and best practices on climate change mitigation and adaptation, as well as their experiences on opportunities and challenges of using/disseminating knowledge. A major anticipated output is to chart a way forward how best to use knowledge platforms and how to develop synergies among different platforms, with the aim of scaling up and out best practices and technologies.