Working towards an agroecological transition and a systemic approach to food systems
The Food Systems Caravan travelled more than 3500 Km by land through five countries: Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Benin and Nigeria, linking different local actors of the food systems and promoting dialogues to upscale innovative practices to make West African food systems more sustainable.
The project was built on an extensive network of projects under the framework of the food security module of the Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues for Development (R4D), and aimed at establishing new bridges between science, practice and information and communication technologies. One of the main goals was to activate change and disseminate examples of positive socio-ecological transformations adapted to the West African context.
The Food Systems Caravan (caravan) disseminated and upscaled locally adapted agroecological practices resulting from ongoing participatory research projects in the framework of the food security module of the Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues for Development (r4d) and sought to accelerate their uptake by farmers and other food system actors in West Africa. Thereby, it built stronger bridges in the production, use and synthesis of knowledge between different sectors, which typically do not have much contact with each other, such as farmers, scientists, policy makers, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), extension officers and members of the private sector. The caravan was a collaboration between FiBL Switzerland (Fernando Sousa), the University of Bern (Prof. Dr. Chinwe Ifejika Speranza), and the independent film maker Sara Baga, as well as research and civil society partners in Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Benin and Nigeria.
The caravan built on the results of these four transdisciplinary r4d projects that focus on ecologically and socially sustainable solutions for food systems in West Africa: the ORM4Soil (Organic Resource Management for Soil Fertility) project, the IFWA (Insect as Feed for West Africa) project, the Yamsys (Sustainable Yam Systems) project and the FoodSAF (Towards Food Sustainability) project. After six years of transdisciplinary research with scientists-practitioner teams in different West African countries and Switzerland, these four r4d projects provided important insights on: integrated soil-fertility management for sustainable yam-based cropping systems (YAMSYS); the use of local organic resources and agroforestry systems to enhance soil fertility (ORM4Soil); the use of insects as sustainable poultry farming and aquaculture systems for smallholder farms (IFWA); and tools to assess the sustainability of food systems (FoodSAF).
Building on learning that draws on the results of these four r4d projects, the caravan used the transdisciplinary networks of the four projects and expanded them by involving local initiatives and organizations active in agroecological research and practices in the region. The caravan was a two-phased project.
During its first phase in 2019, a series of 31 activities with more than 2000 directly involved participants were organized in Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Benin and Nigeria. The activities included conferences, farmers’ sessions, open classes and seminars in universities and secondary schools, knowledge sharing events with NGOs, and field workshops. The events targeted policy makers, farmers and farmers’ representatives, researchers, students, civil society actors, extension officers and the public. These activities enabled disseminating the results of the four projects and engaging in multi-stakeholder dialogues on how to upscale agroecological practices in the five countries: This engagement provided the opportunity to put the research results into context and even to learn from the farmers already implementing some research results, their practicalities and options for consolidation and upscaling.
Facilitating contact between policy makers and a wide diversity of stakeholders engaged in the sustainable improvement of food systems was achieved through national conferences to which policy makers were invited and actively participated in group discussions. In these workshops and conferences, recommendations to upscale agroecological practices in the national realities of the different countries were drafted.
In the first phase, the caravan organized farmers’ sessions in 12 rural communities in the five countries, and engaged several NGOs in the multi-stakeholder dialogue, which participated actively in the process, thus helping to bring the outputs of the R4D projects to their wide network of farmers and farmers’ representatives. This was the case of AMSD (Malian Association for Solidarity and Development) in Mali; New Tree/Tiipaalga in Burkina Faso; Obrobibini Peace Complex in Ghana; Songhaï center in Benin and the Dominican Center for Agriculture in Nigeria.
Besides class room discussions with students from universities and high schools during 2019, the caravan also sought the engagement of students through organizing an international “Student Project Award”, in which hundreds of students in the five countries were challenged to propose agroecological approaches capable of addressing systemic problems related with the food systems of their region. The contest was promoted in universities in Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin, Ghana and Nigeria and intended to inspire the university students to think critically about the sustainability of the food systems of their realities and create solutions based on agroecological principles. Five student teams (three from Benin, one from Nigeria and one from Ghana) were selected and awarded 1500 CHF to carry out the proposed activities. The student initiatives included agroforestry (Ghana); a cooperative for agroecological food production and training (Benin); the training of youth and women in compost and biopesticide production and access to a local organic market (Nigeria); the organic production and training on traditional leaf vegetables (Benin) and the production and dissemination of biopesticides produced with local ingredients (Benin).
The Food Systems Caravan also developed a strong multimedia component, having engaged an internationally awarded film maker to develop short videos, mini-documentaries and a full-length film to portray agroecological practices to a wider audience. The short videos and the mini-documentaries show the results of r4d projects and the achievements of different NGO’s and initiatives regarding agroecological transition of local food systems. The full-length film, entitled “La Veine Verte”, showcases agroecological practices in the region accompanied by testimonies of actors engaged in progressing the sustainability of West African food systems, and has been premiered on the 18th May 2021 in Bamako, Mali, along with a “Agroecology Forum” with the participation of 250 stakeholders from Mali, Burkina Faso, Benin, Nigeria and Senegal.
The project established a website to report its experiences and results, as well as a YouTube channel and Facebook page in order to gain visibility for its outputs and widespread awareness about the need to upscale agroecological principles and practices in West Africa. Furthermore, the project has received media attention in the five participating countries and beyond, so far with 10 news reports in the national TVs of six countries, 7 articles in newspapers and magazines and two radio programs dedicated to the Food Systems Caravan. This media coverage, particularly the 10 news reports in national and international TV chains in more than six countries, is estimated to have reached millions of people across West Africa, thus promoting a rethink of food systems and the need to integrate agroecological principles to make them more sustainable.
The second phase of the Food Systems ended in December 2021 and sought to upscale the main outputs of the four r4d-projects to thousands of farmers and other actors in the project’s countries. The short videos and the full-length documentary produced by the caravan were translated to local languages of the five participating countries. The caravan partnered with the organization “Access Agriculture” to deliver five “smart projectors” (video projectors equipped with solar panels and rechargeable batteries, and able to store agricultural extension videos and connect to the internet) to five engaged partner organizations in the five countries. These organizations helped expand the outreach of the caravan’s outputs by organizing rural and urban festivals that include the projection of the short videos and full-length documentary film, as well as series of debates and interventions with specialists, in order to reach several thousands of farmers and urban residents across West Africa. The full-length documentary will be broadcast on national TVs in different West African countries and run for documentary film festivals around the world.
The caravan has thus succeeded to transition from one caravan to five local caravans. The caravan’s activities are now coordinated locally by AMSD in Mali, in association with the French Institute of Mali; by New Tree in Burkina Faso; by Obrobinini Peace Complex, in association with the University of Ghana; by INRAB in Benin, in association with the awarded student teams of the “Student Project Award” and by the Big Picture student team in Nigeria, in association with the IITA (International Institute for Tropical Agriculture). These multi-stakeholder teams are organizing several dozens of covid-19 conform agroecology extension events in rural and urban areas of the five countries, mainly targeting farmers, but also students and the public. The events will use the projection of videos as valuable inputs for in-depth discussions with specialists about the implementation and adaptation of the portrayed agroecological innovations, before sharing a version of the videos with end users, in a format optimized for their cell phones using the Bluetooth technology. This will also enable farmers, most of which have nowadays a cell phone with Bluetooth and video technology, to be the owners and disseminators of agroecological information in their own languages. This way of sharing agricultural knowledge with farmers has been tested by the team in Mali and Burkina Faso, with observed high numbers of decentralized dissemination of knowledge among farmers. Observations show this method to be uniquely adequate to improve access to agricultural information to women and youth, often excluded from access to information.
Project coordination
