By Daniel Otunge
In this in-depth Q&A, Daniel Otunge sat down with Dr. Enock Chikava, Director of Agricultural Delivery Systems at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to seek his insights into the impact of climate change on smallholder farming and Food systems in Africa in the context of the just concluded COP 29.
Q: How badly does the climate emergency affect agriculture in Africa?
First, one begins to understand the threat the climate emergency poses to Africa, considering that most African economies depend on agriculture, unlike Europe or the West. For instance, only 1.4 percent of the United States (US) population is employed in primary food production, while in Africa, it is more than 50%, and in some countries, it is even more than 70%. Thus, anything that affects agriculture is a true enemy of the continent. The tragedy is that agriculture and climate change mutually affect each other negatively, making mitigation and adaptation interventions urgent, extraordinarily challenging, and costly.
Second, in the US, agriculture, food, and related industries contribute to the gross domestic product (GDP) only 5.6%, and in Africa, it’s more than 30%. When you think about this more deeply, you realize that the African smallholder farmers, who produce 80% of the food consumed on the continent, are fully employed in agriculture. So, when climate change calamities hit, African farmers suffer the most. When the El Nino-induced floods and drought hit Eastern and Southern Africa, respectively, recently, they destroyed crops and livestock, affecting everything – food, jobs, income, and livelihoods!
That is why fighting climate change by fully implementing the Paris Agreement and other funding promises made is more critical to Africa and other low-and-middle-income economies, which emit less than 10 percent of greenhouse gases but suffer, first and most, from climate change impacts compared to high-income economies, which emit 90 percent of the impugned gases. It is concerning that the COP negations are in their 29th year, but still, there is no meeting of minds on critical issues such as climate financing for mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage. And there won’t be any amicable meeting of minds until the world understands the difficult situation of smallholder agriculture.
Q: What are the Foundation and its partners doing to cushion farmers from the effects of climate change as the COP negotiations drag on?
Our work is to develop technologies, innovations, solutions, and systems that work for smallholder farmers. For instance, because the current seed systems based on maize, rice, wheat, and soya beans were not designed for smallholder farmers, we are involved in the seed system for value chains that are appropriate and relevant for smallholder farmers in climate-change-prone environments. There was no research and development on cassava, millet, teff, or sweet potatoes because these commodities are not consumed in Europe or North America. Thus, seed companies would only invest commercially to improve these crops’ productivity and disease resistance. We, therefore, intentionally support research, development, and deployment of crops and livestock that are more consumed in the global south and have more climate relevance and resilience.
We also work on essential livestock species for Africa, like small ruminants, fish, dairy cows, and the pastoralist beef systems. For instance, 80% of the meat consumed in Kenya comes from the pastoralist system, but more needs to be done to address its numerous challenges, including climate change’s impact. Pastoralist farmers have fragile Indigenous cows, quickly wiped out by disease and drought, so genetic improvement, livestock health, and nutrition are needed.
Breakthroughs include improving the genetics of traditional tropical chicken. Today’s indigenous chicken only gives 40 -60 eggs in eighteen months. The Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) and International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) have crossed the local, hardy chickens with highly productive chickens – maintaining hardness, food-scavenging for food, and camouflaging from predators, but massively improving their genetics. The improved chicken now gives farmers up to 120 eggs in eighteen months and double the meat weight in half the time!
The other focus is on animal health. If you do not vaccinate your day-old chick, you risk losing 90 percent through mortality. So, ensuring vaccinations, feeding, and lighting within the first 40 days has been a game changer—these models have now distributed 192 million day-old chicks in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Nigeria, and Kenya.
In summary, we work on improving crops and livestock genetics and affordable access to advisory services, which are becoming more critical under climate change conditions. When I was growing up as a smallholder farmer’s kid in Zimbabwe, my parents used to do dry planting. They knew without fail that rains would come between the 10th and 15th of November. And because we knew the pattern, farmers would do dry planting starting on the first of November. However, today, due to climate change, no one knows the rain patterns. Therefore, no one does dry planting anymore. This is problematic because basic agronomy tells us that when the season has started, you lose 50 kg per hectare every day you plant after the season has begun. For crops like maize, their yields depend on heat units. When the season ends, the temperatures go down, so your crops won’t grow well. So, if you have a certain amount of heat units and the rain starts, and you plant five days after, you will already have lost 250 kgs because it won’t get sufficient heat units to get maximum yields. Moreover, if you plant maize and don’t weed in the first six weeks of germination, you have already lost 50% of the potential yield.
Q: What stops smallholder farmers from using some of the innovative technologies you mentioned above to be climate resilient?
The biggest challenge is the need for more information. That is why the Foundation’s focus is on access to advisory services. For example, one extension officer in Kenya is responsible for 5,000 farmers. A farmer would not see an extension officer for more than two years. Thus, if the extension officer has new information, there is no way to pass it effectively and timeously. But now, there are disruptive innovations. You can now use digital, and more importantly, we are now working on AI-driven advisory, which is hyperlocal. It takes the information about soil, weather, and markets, then advises the farmer in real-time on the right crop that will give her the proper return in the market that aligns with her soil and rainfall data available. The AI-driven advisory is now configured so farmers can use the local language to interact with their mobile phones.
Kenya spends between three and five dollars per person for extension services. The government is already spending money but is getting nothing from it, with AI, which is now successfully being used in India and is being piloted here in Kenya. In India, this innovation has reduced the cost of servicing a farmer from about two dollars to 18 cents.
Q: At COP 29, the Foundation and its Partners launched the Agricultural Innovation Mechanism (AIM) Scale Package for weather. What is it in simple terms?
The AIM for Scale is based on acknowledging that we already have the innovations that smallholder farmers need to fight climate change. Yes, we have the innovations but do not see their impact because no one is deploying them at a large scale to the farmers who need them most. The smallholder farmers need the buying power. So, AIM for Scale involves identifying partners that can pool resources to deploy the innovations to the farmers in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
AIM for Scale extends what we have learned in global health. You have vaccine manufacturers here, and then you have the country that needs it but has no buying power. And we have GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, coming in and negotiating with pharmaceuticals to procure the vaccines at scale and distribute them to those who need them most at discounted prices. Thus, we are now looking for something similar in agriculture through AIM for Scale.
Innovations exist, but they need to get to where they are required. You need funds to ensure that you can procure them at scale to give them to the people who need them the most. Innovations will become obsolete if they are not adopted sooner with climate change. When you are developing innovation, you are doing it for certain climates, and when climate shifts before it is used, it means you developed something that was never used. So, we need to find an accelerated pace of technology adoption and scaling. To cope with climate change, farmers need accurate and timely weather information. The first AIM Scale’s one-billion-dollar package is set to address that.
In summary, AIM for Scale, announced at COP28 as part of a new partnership between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), is a multi-partner effort to transition evidence-based, cost-effective innovations to scale for the benefit of farmers affected by climate change. The weather package will harness the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to help national meteorological and hydrological services (NMHS) produce high-quality, farmer-centered forecasts. Disseminating these forecasts to millions of farmers can build resilience and support adaptation as climate change makes weather patterns less predictable.
Q: How will AIM for Scale reach and benefit smallholder farmers in Africa?
It is going to link the innovations that exist with farmers. Part of the aim for scale partners will be farmers’ associations and a network of agro-dealers who will be the heart of the distribution channel once we get these resources, which we believe will flow in, whether it comes as a government program or not. Most governments are implementing flagship farming programs. The Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT), funded by the African Development Bank, is an example. TAAT combines a loan and innovation package, unlike when a government borrows money and decides what to grow. Under AIM for Scale, a technology package will accompany some of these sovereign loans or grants.
Much of the work we do now is through digital innovation. So, a farmer will get an SMS text telling her it will rain in the next three days. KALRO already has a digital registry of about 1.4 million farmers in Kenya. Building on this, and with internet connectivity through satellite (GPS) and phone numbers, farmers would get timely weather information. They would get early warnings about temperature, rainfall, and disease conditions, enabling the farmer to spray against a particular disease because it is favorable. We have used that in Ethiopia for wheat rust early warning system. This has saved the government of Ethiopia 200 million dollars a year. You can do that for almost any pest, including locusts.
Q: It means you are working with national research systems. Will they also access these funds from the package?
A network in each country would be best for sharing information about weather and innovations. In some countries, like Kenya, we will build on existing data and grow it. However, in countries without such a registry, we will help them create viable systems and data that would be leveraged under the AIM for Scale.
In the Global North, they have what is called precision agriculture. It is costly because data and precision are needed to get the desired yields. That is why, here in Africa, we are working on decision agriculture. The decision is based on timely, credible information so the farmer can make the best decision. So, with weather, market, and disease information, you could create datasets and make different decisions that benefit the farmer.
So, under climate change conditions, you want farmers equipped with as much information about their situation as possible before they start to do anything. Farmers in the Global North do this every day, but the cost is so high, and that is why you need resources now to bring the price down for subsistence farmers in LIMCs.
Q: So, is AIM for Scale building on the Gates Foundation’s pilot programs invested in over the years?
Many of these things exist, but they are pilots. We have done a lot of work to prove the concept. I’ll give you one example: the cost of knowing your soil using the traditional way where you go and dig your soil sample, and you need to come up with as many samples as possible; you analyze a sample each, and some countries do not even have analysis labs in their country so they send every sample to other countries, including the United Kingdom, to do the lab tests and get the results.
The cost of testing conventional soil is 103 dollars for every sample, which is way beyond the means of smallholder farmers. So, we have reduced that cost by 97 percent by using simplified satellite imagery and machine learning, enabling the countries to get about 20 soil characteristics at 30 meters resolution. That is why we know now that over 800,000 hectares in western Kenya are acidic and need liming. We have invested in soil data information and an early warning system, so we now have the components, the partners, and the technologies, so more resources are needed to scale this.
We work with a partner called iSDA, which used predictive machine learning technology to build Africa’s first field-level soil map, with 20+ soil properties predicted at 30m resolution. It will take data on 30 m by 30m of your soil and tell you the kind of soil data you have. And we found that it is so empowering. If you know the texture of your soil, its microorganisms, and the chemical composition, you can farm on the computer before you farm in real life because you know exactly what is needed and how the crop grows. And that is what is required under the conditions of climate change. If you go and do trial and error, you will lose significantly. But you can do it with so much knowledge, and this is the power that we want to make sure that it is available to every farmer so that they can now make informed decisions.
Q: What are your feelings about the ongoing discussions at COP29 regarding agriculture and climate adaptation?
I think we made progress from COP28 but are beginning to make little progress at almost every COP. As we saw from the negotiations in Baku this year, COP29 was no different.
By the end of the day, it boils down to how much money we have for climate adaptation in Africa and South Asia. And I am sure it is now about determining how to get the money, who has it, and how those who need it will get it.
We are getting closer to every country being able to quantify its needs. This is vital because every country should know what it takes to adapt fully to climate change. This will guide how the funds flow to nations for mitigation and adaptation. It will be those countries with cleaner, more apparent plans that will benefit more.
At COP27, we announced that we would contribute 1.4 billion dollars to climate adaptation, which included our work on resilient crops. About 60 percent focuses on crop, livestock, and digital system innovation. Thirty percent goes to country systems and plans. Every country must have an adaptation plan for vulnerable areas. Ten percent helps elevate the voices of the most affected people.
We supported the development of a group called AGNES (African Group of Negotiators). These negotiators are equipped with knowledge, good plans, evidence, and data for guidance. We have also seen tremendous progress in terms of the ability of African negotiators at COPs. We cannot be the spokesperson for the people who are affected. Our job is to ensure we equip them with the necessary information to underpin their work. We are working on innovation, country preparedness, and supporting negotiators.
COP29 took place during many geopolitical challenges. While the outcomes at Baku were mixed, I’m still optimistic about where we can progress further. Government leaders must continue to relentlessly pledge commitments relentlessly, especially in adapting our agricultural systems for a warming planet.
Looking toward COP30 in Brazil, we must get urgent funding, resources, and innovations into the hands of countries that need them most. The sooner we can unlock and disperse this funding, the sooner nations that have been—and will be—hit the hardest by climate change can act swiftly and remain unhindered in their ambition to build climate-resilient food systems.
Q: The COP system shows that the food system and agriculture are beginning to gain much more prominence.
Yes, stakeholders are beginning to realize that agriculture is affected and affects climate. And remember, the Brazilian COP30 theme will be around poverty reduction and food systems, which you remember started in Egypt, amplified in UAE, and now in Azerbaijan.
I think it is going to climax in Brazil. They will focus more on adaptation and the food system because it is glaring. We have 800 million people going to bed hungry every day globally. The most significant portion is here in Africa, where 20 percent of the population goes to bed hungry daily. That is why I said Africa needs resources the most. If you care about the SDGs, you must know where we have the most significant burden. Often, that is our role: to amplify where the issues are so that the global community can allocate resources and allocate them where they are needed the most.
Q: Can you briefly unpack the New Collective Quantified Goals on climate financing? Why is it necessary?
The New Collective Quantified Goals (NCQGs) are meant to be a framework that can help unleash funding for countries experiencing the worst impacts of climate change. Many of these impacts are mainly caused by climate-related harm to their farmers and food systems.
This year’s negotiations in Baku committed wealthy nations’ public and private sectors to raise $1.3 trillion in global climate investments for low- and middle-income countries by 2035. By the same year, high-income countries pledged to mobilize $300 billion annually in climate financing. In response, many leaders and experts fear that current inflation trends and lack of clear measures mean these funding targets will fall short of matching climate change’s present and impending threats.
From here, it will be critical for new funding levels and public-private collaboration across the global community to take shape as we look toward COP30 and beyond. We must remain optimistic and reframe the negotiations in Baku as a starting point.
