Transforming agriculture

The Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources Policy Analysis Network (FANRPAN) is a pan-African network that provides independent evidence to inform policy processes at national and regional levels. FANRPAN is a multi-tiered network consisting of a regional secretariat and established national nodes, currently in 17 African countries, namely Angola, Benin, Botswana, DRC, Eswatini, Kenya, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Rwanda is the latest to establish a national node, with a lot of development taking place in West Africa.

FANRPAN’s membership includes food, agriculture and natural resources (FANR) -related government departments, parliamentarians, research and farmer organisa-tions, the private sector, civil-society organisations and the media. FANRPAN’s mandate is derived from the first Conference of Ministers of Agriculture of Eastern and Southern Africa held in Harare in April 1994, where the ministers agreed to support the establishment of a regional agricultural policy network to enhance the capacity for policy formulation and analysis. In response, FANRPAN was established in 1997, with an initial focus on Southern and East Africa. In 2010, after an expression of interest from countries outside those regions, the network’s mandate was expanded to cover the continent.

THE FANRPAN APPROACH
With its vision focused on ‘building resilient food systems across Africa’, FANRPAN addresses the challenge of policy development, usually seen as the preserve of governments, by providing platforms for non-state actors to participate in evidence-based policy processes. To achieve this, FANRPAN’s delivery mechanism comprises three mutually supportive strategic thrusts, namely capacity-building, policy research and analysis, and advocacy.

FANRPAN provides a platform for non-state actors to take part in evidence-based policy processes

Capacity-building
The capacity-buidling strategic thrust seeks to strengthen the capacity for policy research, the translation of research findings into policy options, and policy deliberations at regional and national levels through partnerships and training programmes linking research-based contributions to policy advocacy. FANRPAN’s focus on capacity-building is concentrated at a country level, where the aim is to strengthen the different stakeholder groups that form the national node. This involves strengthening state and non-state players, such as research institutions, farmers, agribusiness, civil society and the media. Further, the re-organisation and revamping of the network’s national nodes is an ongoing activity aimed at improving their effectiveness as conveners and leaders of agricultural sector policy dialogues.

Policy research and analysis
Through the policy research and analysis thrust, FANRPAN seeks to contribute to the attainment of regional and continental agriculture frameworks by conducting and co-ordinating research in priority policy areas, as defined by the regional economic and continental bodies. While research evidence provides a basis for policy harmonisation or improvement in the FANR sector, a major focus for FANRPAN is engaging in the translation of research evidence and related reports into policies that can be implemented to aid sectoral transformation. In support of its mandate, FANRPAN’s research strategy and approach ensures a balance between long-term programmatic research that supports regional policy processes; exploration of emerging policy areas in anticipation of needs; and conducting of commissioned research. Through a structured monitoring, evaluation and learning function, the policy research and analysis thrust also promotes effective policy implementation by tracking progress on key national, regional and continental policy decisions.

Policy advocacy and knowledge management
FANRPAN is keenly aware that the policy sphere has largely been the preserve of state actors, with little or no contribution from non-state actors. The non-participation of civil society in policy processes has been aggravated by the challenge of translating research into policies, the absence of relevant research evidence to back policy options, and a lack of capacity among non-state stakeholder groups to effectively engage with the state. Through the policy advocacy and knowledge management thrust, FANRPAN seeks to enhance the voice of researchers, farmers’ organisations, agribusiness, parliamentarians, the media and other non-state actors, to assume evidence and articulate the interests in important agricultural and food-policy debates, such as the national and regional commitments in the Malabo Declaration.

Strategy and programming
As part of its 2016 to 2023 strategic plan, FANRPAN has a deliberate focus on two of the major challenges of our time – climate change and nutrition. In response, it has its strategic focus trained on promoting climate-smart agriculture and nutrition-sensitive agriculture, implementing a number of projects to advance these two thematic thrusts. FANRPAN’s flagship project focused on climate change is the Agricultural and Food System Resilience: Increasing Capacity and Advising Policy (AFRICAP), funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF).

GCRF-AFRICA
The GCRF-AFRICAP is a GBP9.2 million programme to make agriculture and food production in sub-Saharan Africa more productive, sustainable and resilient to climate change. Its implementation is jointly led by the FANRPAN and the University of Leeds. Working with organisations and governments in Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia, the lead partners are creating an evidence base to underpin new country-specific policies for agriculture and food production. Other partners in the programme include the University of Aberdeen, the UK Met Office and Chatham House, and the Royal Institute of International Affairs, all from the UK. African partners include the Civil Society Agriculture Network (Malawi); the National Agriculture Marketing Council (South Africa); the Economic and Social Research Foundation (Tanzania); and the Agriculture Consultative Forum (Zambia).

As part of it current strategic plan, FANRPAN is focusing on the twin challenges of climate change and nutrition

Food systems research
Through cross-disciplinary research involving academic, policy and industry partners in the UK and Africa, the AFRICAP programme is building a comprehensive picture of present-day agriculture and food systems in Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia. By drawing together existing knowledge of the opportunities and challenges for climate-smart agriculture, and the broader policy and institutional environments at play, the research outcomes provide a basis for envisioning and evaluating possible futures for agriculture and food systems. Through partnerships with in-country stakeholders, interdisciplinary research is being used to generate evidence to inform and influence policy development at sub-national and national levels, helping countries to build resilience to future climate-change shocks, while working towards food and nutrition security for all. Complementing this collaborative research is a focus on training and capacity-building targeted at a cohort of UK and African scholars.

Policy design and implementation
The AFRICAP programme engages with networks of local, national, regional and international organisations that have a stake in sustainable agriculture and food production in East and Southern Africa. Through these networks, the AFRICAP programme shares evidence generated in the ongoing research and modelling with policy- and decision-makers to enable them to apply this in their work towards developing climate-smart and sustainable agricultural development. This work takes place through two key channels, namely engaging in key agrifood policy processes in sub-Saharan Africa; and providing input to other national and regional policy processes.

Climate-smart development pathways
The AFRICAP programme models and evaluates the pathways to be followed to achieve food and nutrition security in Malawi, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia, through agriculture development that is climate-smart and resilient. Using an integrated framework, the Future Estimator for Emissions and Diets (iFEED), the programme incorporates modelling of the full range of climate, agricultural and land-use dynamics in each country, with stakeholder-driven scenario narratives and expert judgement, enabling it to determine ideal pathways for regional land use, agricultural technology development, and changes in diets. As a result, the programme’s policy design and implementation theme is enabled to contribute to the delivery of the Sustainable Development Goals, as well as limiting the rise in greenhouse-gas emissions from each of the participating countries’ agriculture.

The combination of models and expert judgement enables the evaluation of the trade-offs and opportunities associated with the scenarios developed under the programme’s food-systems research theme. The integrated models enable the quantification of greenhouse-gas mitigation, crop yields, water use, soil fertility and food production. Using trade and land-use data, the programme assesses the amount of food likely to be available in the future under different scenarios, and how this will impact on diets and nutrition. Through iFEED, the AFRICAP programme is able to predict the impact of current activities. Using current trends such as crop management and yields, climate change, land and water availability, and emission trajectories, iFEED is able to forecast agricultural development and its impact on aspects such as yield and nutrition, requirements for land, water, greenhouse-gas emissions and ecosystem services. Working back from the desired development objectives of 2050 to today, the framework is also able to map the pathways, highlighting the ideal technical routes by which these outcomes can be achieved.

Training and capacity-building
Training, capacity-building and knowledge-sharing are central components of the AFRICAP programme. These ensure that the programme’s impact extends beyond the lifetime of the funding. Through training programmes as well as research and innovation development, AFRICAP is designed to help project partners adapt their structure and support systems to effectively attract and manage other global-challenge projects. To deliver on its capacity-strengthening objectives, the AFRICAP initiative is providing opportunities across the programme consortium to improve individual, organisational and institutional capacity in agrifood system resilience. For knowledge-sharing, a series of seminars was launched in January 2019 and offers opportunities for team members and external speakers to share relevant research across the broader network.