Less than a month after laying the foundation for information and knowledge sharing on climate change adaptation, outputs from the workshop held in early September by the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) West Africa program are being unwind.
In Senegal, more than a dozen of organizations and institutions including Ministries of Fisheries, Agriculture, research institutions, farmers’ organizations and civil society organisations took the step forward, gathering in October to create the Senegalese platform on climate change, agriculture and food security. Mamadou Diallo, Director of Agriculture stated during his opening speech that “this platform will act as a network and will bring together policy makers and researchers in a single interactive way”.
Bounama Dieye of the agricultural extension office, and focal point of the national platform added that “it will serve as a link between policy makers and researchers so that the results produced by research structures are used by decision makers in sectoral policy letters and operationally by farmers and other producers”.
Dr. Aliou Diouf, Program Officer at Enda-Energy said in a video presenting the platform that “it comes right on time as in the field of adaptation to climate change, there was a gap between “knowledge producers” and “knowledge users”. This platform will serve as the missing piece, connecting these two communities and enabling national decision makers to develop intelligent agricultural policies that are consistent with climate change.”
“Adaptation is not something new to farmers. They have always come up with adaptation capacities. However, these local knowledge were scattered. Through this national platform, farmers voices and experiences will have echo as this initiative will tie researchers and farmers” concludes Ibrahima Paul Thiaw from the Senegalese Federation of Nongovernmental Organizations (FONGS).
Further meetings are planned to finalize this process that yet appears to all stakeholders as an effective solution to develop networking opportunities among all that are concerned by climate change, agriculture and food security in Senegal and West Africa.
