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Diversifying revenue in rural Africa through circular, sustainable and replicable bio-based solutions and business models

Project description

Support the development of the bioeconomy in rural Africa

As Africa will need to feed 2 billion people by 2050, the continent's bioeconomy must play a leading role in safeguarding food security. The EU-funded BIO4AFRICA project will address this challenge, facilitating the growth of the bioeconomy in rural Africa by developing circular biobased solutions and value chains to encourage the use of local resources and diversify the income of farmers. The initiative will focus on transferring simple, small-scale and robust biobased technologies adapted to local biomass, needs and contexts. The goal is to empower local farmers to sustainably produce a variety of higher-value biobased products and energy, thereby significantly improving the environmental, economic and social performance of their forage and agri-food systems.

Objective

Africa will need to feed over 2 billion people by 2050 while coping with unprecedented demographic, socio-economic, environmental, climatic and health transitions. Meanwhile, undernourishment is still on the rise, affecting almost 20% of its population now. Under this light, ensuring Africa’s food security becomes imperative, with the bioeconomy posed to play a leading role to this end. It is against this backdrop that BIO4AFRICA sets off to support the deployment of the bioeconomy in rural Africa via the development of bio-based solutions and value chains with a circular approach to drive the cascading use of local resources and diversify the income of farmers. Our focus is on transferring simple, small-scale and robust bio-based technologies adapted to local biomass, needs and contexts (green biorefinery, pyrolysis, hydrothermal carbonisation, briquetting, pelletising, bio-composites and bioplastics production). In doing so we aim at empowering farmers to sustainably produce a variety of higher value bio-based products and energy (animal feed, fertiliser, pollutant absorbents, construction materials, packaging, solid fuel for cooking and catalysts for biogas production), significantly improving the environmental, economic and social performance of their forage agri-food systems. To this end, we have set up 4 pilot cases with over 8 testing sites in Uganda, Ghana, Senegal and Ivory Coast, offering more than 300 farmers and farmer groups of all sizes (incl. small dairy and lower-income farmers, women farmer groups and transhumant pastoralists among others) the opportunity to test them in real productive conditions. Along the way, our balanced mix of 13 African and 12 EU partners will engage in solid multi-actor collaboration with rural communities and government, co-developing novel sustainable value chains driven by circular business models and supporting deployment in other areas, all while safeguarding agronomic, environmental, social and economic sustainability.

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RIA - Research and Innovation action

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) H2020-SFS-2018-2020

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Coordinator

CENTRE DE COOPERATION INTERNATIONALE EN RECHERCHE AGRONOMIQUE POUR LEDEVELOPPEMENT - C.I.R.A.D. EPIC
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 478 975,00
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RUE SCHEFFER 42
75016 Paris
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Ile-de-France Ile-de-France Paris
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Research Organisations
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 478 975,00

Participants (24)

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