During the last two decades, 200 million people have been lifted out of hunger. But climate change threatens those gains, and Africa will be the hardest hit region.
Agriculture is Africa's biggest employer. But mean temperatures are expected to rise faster than the global average, decreasing crop yields, deepening poverty.
Smallholder farmers – the engine of Africa's production – are disproportionately vulnerable to climate change as a result of their marginalisation, and reliance on natural resources. That’s why it’s important to strengthen, now, the resilience of those at-risk communities.
IRIN has undertaken a project with the Open Society Foundations to explore the challenges that global warming is triggering, and what local communities are doing to adapt, to reduce their vulnerability.
The project covers four countries - Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal and Zimbabwe - with the goal of learning lessons so that small-scale farmers can be better supported as their challenges multiply. It provides a platform for policy discussion, and for the voices of those men and women on the frontlines of climate change to be heard.
