ACCRA, Ghana (PAMACC News) - The demand for cocoa remains high, with increasing consumption of cocoa products by emerging economies which is expected to increase in the coming decades.However, the cost of producing the beans continues to increase, yields are declining and the negative impacts of climate change continue to threaten the already poor smallholder cocoa farmers.The cocoa sector has also seen very limited innovations and new investments while cocoa trees and farmers continue to age.“One of the impacts of this dwindling productivity is the removal of shade trees from farms and the expansion of cocoa cultivation into areas of rainforest,” said Harm Duiker, Country Director of SNV Netherlands Development Organisation. “As a result, globally, cocoa is counted among the major driver of deforestation and biodiversity loss”.As a forest shade grown tree, cocoa is a crop that thrives in areas of high biodiversity and tropical forests landscapes.Farmers and scientists alike recognize that shade trees are vital to reducing both ecological and economic risks, including maintenance of soil fertility and moisture, weed suppression and pest and disease control.They also acknowledge shade trees play an important role in climate adaption in cocoa system.However, there is increasing demand for scientific evidence of ecological and economic benefits of trees in cocoa systems.Recent studies have contested the benefits claimed to be associated with cocoa agroforestry, including mitigating adverse climate effects, pathogen or disease regulation, and more importantly improvements in soil fertility.The Cocoa DialogueThe national dialogue on cocoa agroforestry systems therefore had the objective of consolidating evidence-based ecological and economic benefits of cocoa agroforestry systems, identifying gaps in knowledge and to ensure consistency in promoting cocoa agroforestry science, policy and practice in Ghana.It was organised by SNV Ghana in collaboration with the Ghana Cocoa Board, the Faculty of Renewable Natural Resources, KNUST and International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA).The event attracted experts who observed that gaps in science and practice, and inconsistencies in the promotion of cocoa agroforestry as well as land and tree tenure bottlenecks constitute major challenges to the rapid adoption of cocoa agroforestry systems among smallholder cocoa farmers in Ghana.They called for increased research to fill the gaps in evidence-base science and the practice of cocoa agroforestry systems in Ghana.Rev. Dr. Emmanuel Ahia Clottey, the Deputy Director Cocoa Health and Extension Division (CHED), reiterated COCOBOD’s commitment to promoting cocoa agroforestry under its recently launched cocoa rehabilitation project.He said the current programme targets only 156,400ha out of the 700,000 total rehabilitation need of the entire cocoa landscape of Ghana.He therefore called for stakeholders’ investment into cocoa rehabilitation in order to increase productivity of current land under cultivation in Ghana.Expert presentations and discussions were made on the current state of knowledge on soil improvement, soil nutrient and water competition, disease and pest control, trees species recommendation in shaded cocoa systems.According to Prof. Boateng Kyeremeh from the Faculty of Renewable Natural Resources, KNUST, the realities of climate change vis-a-vis sustainability show the importance of holding the national dialogue to help farmers built resilience.He believes Ghana’s cocoa…

LIBREVILLE, Gabon (PAMACC News) - Water experts, policy makers, government representatives, UN agencies, donors and nongovernmental organisations kicked off the celebration of the seventh edition of the Africa Water Week in Libreville city of Gabon on 29th October 2018, calling on African governments to reflect on achievements made so far towards availing clean water and sanitation services to all.The one week long event is convened by the African Ministers Council on Water (AMCOW) in collaboration with UKaid supported project for Unlocking the Potential of Ground Water for the Poor (UpGro), USAID, Africa Development Bank (AfDB), The Global Water Partnership (GWP) and the International Water Management Institute.According to Prof Makame Mbarawa, the AMCOW President and the Minister for Water and Irrigation for Tanzania, the event is a call to action and positions Africa to creatively think, act and win.“This is an opportunity to share lessons and good practices in water security management, to share lessons and good practices on enhancing water and sanitation resilience to climate change,” he said in a statement.One of the objectives is also to create an opportunity to contribute to developing strategies on raising adequate and sustainable financing of water and sanitation agendas.The 7th Africa Water Week, brings together over 1000 participants from governments, regional institutions, international partners, the private sector, the scientific community, civil society, and the media particularly from AfricaThe Minister for Water and Engergy for Gabon Hon Patrick Eyogo Edzang lauded Prof Mbarawa’s statement saying that accomplishing water security is imperative to safeguarding sustainable access to adequate quantities of acceptable quality water to maintaining livelihoods, human wellbeing, and socio-economic development. The Africa Union Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture, H.E Sacko Eyogo Leonel Correa urged all African governments to include more water sanitation and hygiene projects in their National Determined Contributions (NDC) to unlock more climate related financing mechanisms such as the Green Climate Fund, Adaptation Fund, AfDB Climate related Funds, and a host of other sources of funding.Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) is a term used under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that all countries that signed the UNFCCC were asked to publish in the lead-up to the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Paris. Once the agreement is ratified, the INDCs automatically changes to NDCs.“I also want to congratulate AMCOW on the launch of the 2018 - 2030 strategy, and therefore, I call upon our ministers to take action, and they should not keep this important document on their shelves,” said Correa, calling on development partners to help in implementation of the tool.In a video recorded speech to the delegates, Amina Jane Mohammed, the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations and a former Minister of Environment of Nigeria noted that the challenge of water scarcity is exacerbated by the widening impacts of climate change. “This is both unacceptable, and yet avoidable,” she said. She called on political leadership to accelerate progress. “In this regard, the United Nations is working…

IKOM, Nigeria (PAMACC News) - Chiamaka Abraham is a hygiene hero from Ikom LGA, Cross River state, South-south Nigeria. She attends Holy Trinity Academy and she is 8 years old. Chiamaka recently visited another school in her neighbourhood (PCN Primary School, Ikom) to talk about the importance of handwashing with soap or ash and the implication of not practicing handwashing at critical times. She demonstrated how to and supported in constructing a handwashing gallery for the school. She also demonstrated the steps to proper handwashing to the host pupils. At the end of her discourse and demonstrations, she entertained questions from the school kids, and boldly advised the management of PCN Primary school to encourage good hygiene practices such as effective handwashing in the school. On what motivates her, she informed the WASH unit staff that she would not want to contact germs that would lead to illness for her, making her parent spend money in the hospital or she dying as a result. She further said, ‘I want to be part of the campaign to save other children’s lives. I want to advice all children to always wash their hands with soap and water, else they contact germs. If they contact germs, they will fall sick, spend money in the hospital or die. Today I visited PCN primary school, to tell them the importance of Handwashing. I will continue to preach this message to all children around me, to save their lives and save mine too’. Global Handwashing Day 15th October, together with its cousin World Toilet Day on 19th November, brings attention to the most basic issues – hygiene & sanitation – that to our shame still account for two million child deaths a year.A third of the world’s population – 2.4 billion people – live with poor sanitation and hygiene which, according to the World Bank, costs countries $260 billion annually. Every day 2,000 children die before reaching their fifth birthday due to diarrheal diseases, the vast majority caused by poor sanitation and hygiene. Diarrhea alone has killed far more young children in Nigeria over the last 12 months – around 150,000 – than Boko Haram’s slaughtering and the wars in Syria combined. Whilst we continue the daily search for even a hint of a resolution to these two brutal and complex conflicts, we already know the simple solution to tackling hygiene and sanitation-related diseases.We know that handwashing with soap is the most effective and inexpensive way to prevent diarrheal diseases - reducing incidence by up to 47% - and combined with improved sanitation, this is boosted to 68%. We know that in countries with the highest child mortality rates, as few as 1% of people wash their hands effectively and that the global average is only 19%. Most frustratingly, effective tools and participatory methods are readily available and it is estimated that interventions that promote handwashing could save close to a million lives. So why is hygiene promotion not a focus of most development projects?The relative…

NAIROBI, Kenya (PAMACC News) - Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organisation and the World Bank are working towards an agricultural observatory platform that will enable institutions access high resolution agro-meteorological data. The partnership is to support Kenya Climate Resilient Agriculture (KCSAP) project under the Ministry of Agriculture Livestock, Fisheries and Irrigation to pilot the Agricultural Observatory Platform for the sector for one year. The data that will be received from satellites will help policy makers and farmers optimize on data that supports agro weather, market, climate and advisory markets. Speaking during the launch of the pilot Agricultural Observatory Platform, KALRO Director General Dr. Eliud Kireger said the biggest challenge in agriculture performance has been lack of accurate, timely and reliable weather. “This data will be able to give accurate information as it will observe information such as temperature, weather and rainfall that will be availed to scientists to make sense of it and in turn provide digital meteorological information using modern ICT tools,” he said. Kireger added that depending on the focus given through the platform, information collected will also be availed to policy makers and farmers to make timely and informed decisions.For the farmers, the DG said they will be able get information on how to prepare early depending on indication of the weather such as early rainfall, poor rainfall or even lack of and thus plan. He said that the policy makers and through the observatory platform will now be able to advise farmers through the Agricultural extension systems on even the variety of maize they need to plant depending on the area data. Kireger noted that the two-year Agricultural Observatory Platform will be able to aggregate field and farm level data into able information that provides insight in addressing the challenge of where it rained, where crops failed and how many people were impacted. The Lead Agriculture Economist from the World Bank, Ladisy Komba Chengula said that the system will be up and running by end of the month. He explained that with only 23 meteorological sites that are providing agro weather data and mostly concentrated in Central and rift valley the current observatory platform will be providing data on rains, temperature, wind and speed in an area of 9 by 9 kms square. “This access is high resolution, reliable and it means we will be having 7,200 agro weather stations that will be giving data,” he said. Chengula explained that the current 23 Kenya Meteorological Department (KMD) owns the ground stations that compliments the data gotten from the satellite and will cost yearly subscription of USD 50,000 which is a subsidy considering one MET stations would cost USD10, 000. “The biggest climate risk Kenya has is drought which alternates with floods even with good rains, this platform will see scientism be able to predict when floods will happen and in which area,” he said. Agronomists says two weeks delay of rains means that 40 percent reduction of yields will occur but with this system one can…