Africa RISING offers demand-driven, locally tailored, and resource-saving agricultural innovations for sustainable intensification to improve household welfare and at the same time enhance sustainability. The program works at the scale of smallholder farm household and, as necessary, at the landscape level. It focuses not only on crop and livestock, but also agroforestry, horticulture, irrigation, soil conservation, nutrition, and gender as interrelated components for more effective solutions. The following are the key farming systems targeted by the program:
- Cereal-based farming systems in the Guinea-Savannah of West Africa covering nine districts in Northern Ghana and two districts in the Sikasso Region in Southern Mali
- Crop-livestock systems in 32 woredas of the Ethiopian Highlands
- Maize-legume-livestock integrated farming systems in East and Southern Africa covering five districts in Malawi, 12 districts in Tanzania, and eight districts in the Eastern Province in Zambia.
IITA leads the research activities in East and Southern Africa and West Africa; ILRI leads the research activities in Ethiopia and, finally, IFPRI supports the program with monitoring and evaluation, online data management, and impact assessment for the whole program. Additional information about the program can be found here and here.
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During Phase I, the program has developed, validated, and deployed relevant, innovative farming technologies including high-value fruits and vegetables; improved livestock, feed and forage management; improved crop varieties; and sustainable agronomic practices. In Phase II, it aims to scale up and out validated innovations to over one million households by 2021 by working with several development partners. Given the five dimensions of sustainable intensification (productivity, economic, environmental, human, and social) and possible trade-offs among them, the program has also developed guide and tools for the sustainable intensification assessment framework (SIAF) through a collaboration with the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Sustainable Intensification, USAID, Michigan State University, University of Florida, and Kansas State University.
The program has generated various types of data that are centrally managed by IFPRI through Dataverse. IFPRI has also developed a data management plan to assist with proper documentation of the evidence base necessary for gauging progress towards achieving program goals and increase program impact. An helpful guide of the minimum data needed for Monitoring and Evaluation of Africa RISING is also available here. IFPRI also supports the annual reporting of FtF indicators data through the Project Mapping and Monitoring Tool. As part of its impact assessment activities, IFPRI conducted five baseline evaluation household and community surveys in Malawi (in 2013) and Ghana, Mali, Ethiopia, and Tanzania (in 2014) using a quasi-experimental approach. These five datasets have been downloaded widely and extensively used Efforts are currently underway to collect follow-up data to assess program’s impact using panel data techniques.
IFPRI M&E team current activities are summarized in the Scope of Work for Phase II.
