AGRA

Through the Regional Hub, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) developed a training manual to facilitate the development of resilient and sustainable (green) food value chains. Over May and June, they hosted remote regional training events to troubleshoot the manual and kickstart the greening process.

About “greening” agrifood value chains

“Greening” refers to the transformation of a process or practice towards a more holistically sustainable and resilient outcome. Green food value chains proactively promote the sustainable use of natural resources to mitigate adverse impacts on the landscape and generate positive results for nature and communities. A resilient and sustainable food value chain considers proper disposal and recycling and has a plan for recapturing value at every stage to reduce environmental, socio-cultural and economic impact overall.

“Greening” intends to provide a holistic, circular, open-ended framework that creates sustainable economic, environmental, and social outcomes for all stakeholders involved. Greening a food value chain leads to increased economic opportunities, innovation in processes and operations, upgraded technology and myriad social benefits, especially for smallholder farmers.

Past training events and outcomes

RFS Regional Hub partners AGRA and UNDP have supported country projects in developing resilient and sustainable value chains since the programme’s start. In September 2019, AGRA and UNDP hosted a regional training workshop focused on greening agricultural value chains for RFS country project teams in Nairobi. The event’s purpose was to teach country project teams to apply value chain concepts to farming operations, raise technical awareness on how to make food value chains more sustainable and resilient, and, importantly, identify further training needs.

Thirty people attended, representing Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Niger, Nigeria, Malawi, Senegal, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania. The trainees attended seminars on integrating climate-smart agriculture into value chains, building community resilience and adapting to climate change. At the end of the training, each country project developed specific action plans for greening their food value chains.

With the knowledge gained from the initial training session, UNDP and AGRA developed a training manual to help guide RFS country teams as they work to green food value chains. The guide aims to build value chain actors’ capacities and analytical skills, focusing specifically on smallholder producers and service providers.

The manual blends best practices and lessons learned from projects, programmes and initiatives that promote resilient and sustainable food value chain development in Africa. It will help country teams implement a holistic approach to agricultural productivity and agribusiness development in their smallholder farming systems.

The training sessions

In May and June, AGRA and UNDP hosted a second round of targeted training to promote and encourage the use of the manual. The training built country team capacity to develop multi-stakeholder platforms (MSPs), identify priority value chains, map value chains, and develop action plans. AGRA-UNDP planning and assistance will cover all aspects of value chain development, from mapping the value chain to financing its “greening”.

To ensure training is tailored to each geographical context, AGRA-UNDP held region specific sessions:

• East Africa: 6 May 2021
• West Africa: 19 May 2021
• Southern Africa: 10 June 2021

If you missed the AGRA-UNDP training or are interested in attending future training sessions, please contact Assan Ngombe for more information.