Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PrAEctiCe (Potentials of Agroecological practices in east Africa with a focus on Circular water-energy-nutrient systems)
Reporting period: 2022-11-01 to 2024-04-30
East Africa, like many other regions in Africa, is experiencing food insecurity attributed to prolonged droughts, soil erosion and a change in the rainfall seasons, which comes as a result of climate change and extreme weather conditions. The Covid-19 pandemic and the ongoing global disputes further exacerbate the food security problem adding to the fragility of the food system in the region. A transition towards a more climate-resilient, transparent and sustainable food system is highly needed.
Agroecology is believed to be a strategy to address the current situation although little is known about agroecological practices and their impacts on labour, incomes and food security. To address this gap, while aiming at helping the smallholder farmers with their Agroecological transition in East Africa, the PrAEctiCe project will focus on quantifying the impacts of current agroecological practices to determine their social-economic viability.
In addition, the project will go beyond the existing indicator frameworks by putting the “concept into action” with a decision support tool for agroecology advisors. This tool will support the selection of the best-suited combination of agroecological practices while assisting farmers in mitigating and adapting the impacts to their realities.
The project brings together 16 consortium members from Europe and Africa adopting a multi-stakeholder approach to jointly develop a novel agroecology indicator set. It mainly focuses on the circular water-energy-nutrient systems of integrated aqua-agriculture while keeping the smallholder farmer’s needs at the centre.
To unify the community knowledge and scientific expertise, The decision support tool developed will be validated in three living labs situated in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
Agroecology is believed to be a strategy to address the current situation although little is known about agroecological practices and their impacts on labour, incomes and food security. To address this gap, while aiming at helping the smallholder farmers with their Agroecological transition in East Africa, the PrAEctiCe project will focus on quantifying the impacts of current agroecological practices to determine their social-economic viability.
In addition, the project will go beyond the existing indicator frameworks by putting the “concept into action” with a decision support tool for agroecology advisors. This tool will support the selection of the best-suited combination of agroecological practices while assisting farmers in mitigating and adapting the impacts to their realities.
The project brings together 16 consortium members from Europe and Africa adopting a multi-stakeholder approach to jointly develop a novel agroecology indicator set. It mainly focuses on the circular water-energy-nutrient systems of integrated aqua-agriculture while keeping the smallholder farmer’s needs at the centre.
To unify the community knowledge and scientific expertise, The decision support tool developed will be validated in three living labs situated in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.
The following deliverables could be already achieved:
The main achievements so far are the construction of the living labs which is almost finish in the first 18 months of the project. These pilots will help to demostrate the efficiency of the water-energy-nutrient circular system. Parallel to this, the app that will help the smalholder farmers' transition into agroecology is being developed by specialist. This work is feeded by several partners that have their input on the indicators framework and mapping stakeholders, agroecology farms and integrated aqua-agriculture.
The work done so far in collaboration within the consortium, has produced 16 deliverables, from which 13 are public, and will be soon be available in our Zenodo account.
The main achievements so far are the construction of the living labs which is almost finish in the first 18 months of the project. These pilots will help to demostrate the efficiency of the water-energy-nutrient circular system. Parallel to this, the app that will help the smalholder farmers' transition into agroecology is being developed by specialist. This work is feeded by several partners that have their input on the indicators framework and mapping stakeholders, agroecology farms and integrated aqua-agriculture.
The work done so far in collaboration within the consortium, has produced 16 deliverables, from which 13 are public, and will be soon be available in our Zenodo account.
The projects has aimed to map different actors involved in agroecology in East Africa through specific activities, such as, the Stakeholder map for Agroecology in East Africa, the Precision mapping of Agroecology practices in East Africa and the Mapping of integrated aqua-agriculture in East Africa. With these, the consortium has now a clearer perspective on the target audience for the impacts of the project. A part of these stakeholders have already participated in co-creation workshops organized by the project, in order to identify needs that where not taken in consideration, and now are part of the future developments of the project's main exploitable results, the Decision Support Tool. Moreover, these results are not standing alone, since together with the Report on existing indicator frameworks, further Selection of successful case studies of combinations of agroecological practices were able to be achieved.