Columbia SIPA Students Explore Climate-Adaptive Measures in Africa

The catastrophic effects of climate change, particularly rising temperatures and changing and unreliable rains will exacerbate agricultural production and endanger food systems in many African countries where crop production is primarily rainfed. Despite these projections, multiple African countries are also racing to be climate-adaptable and are mitigating the adverse effects of climate change. For example, project interventions in Côte d'Ivoire and Senegal are working towards alleviating dangerous emissions from waste.

While this evidence is anecdotal, its consolidation would greatly benefit other regions. Through their capstone project, a group of 10 students from Columbia SIPA are thus working to identify successful climate SMART technologies and innovations functioning in Africa with the interest of replicating them in other parts of the continents. The students' capstone project is a consultation for the World Food Program's Centre of Excellence against Hunger and Malnutrition (CERFAM). The students are conducting broad case studies in Kenya, Madagascar, and Namibia, where evidence suggests the presence of mitigation efforts by various institutions and actors. They are consulting with regional stakeholders, particularly in the food systems and agriculture sectors, to understand their innovative responses to climate change challenges.

The Nairobi Center has played a significant role in facilitating these consultations as it identified academics from the University of Nairobi (Kabete Campus) and the Technical University of Kenya, and also innovative technological start-ups, including GBIACK - which trains and promotes the Grow Biointensive Agriculture technology and Fairways Green Markets Limited – providing access to market, finance and credit and training to farmers. The Center caught up with two of the ten students participating in the project, Meha Jain, SIPA24, and Orcun Dogmazer, SIPA24, at the Technical University of Kenya, where they consulted with faculty experts in climate agriculture, social sciences, and physics. These discussions provided valuable insights into their climate-resilient innovation research, policy advocacy, and inclusion of youth and women in technological advancements. The full report on these discussions will be shared in the students' project findings.