The African Group of Negotiators Experts Support (AGNES) in collaboration with the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) co-hosted a sub-regional workshop in Kigali, Rwanda between 28th 30th May 2025. The workshop aimed to train and sensitize policymakers, Civil Society Organizations, and private sector actors drawn from six countries across the Central African region, on Africa Agriculture Adaptation Atlas tool. During the three-day period, the participants were taken through the Africa Agriculture Adaptation Atlas tool, a digital decision-support tool for informing climate action in the agricultural sector in Africa. The participants were not only exposed to its functionality and features, but they also learnt how the information could be practically applied in planning, investment, and policy development processes.
Unlocking Climate Action Through Usable Data
Climate risks in Africa are significant and disproportionately affect the continent, leading to various challenges across different sectors. These risks include prolonged droughts, changes in rainfall, and heat stress. These threats have affected farming systems , thereby affecting rural livelihoods mostly dependent on small-scale farming. However, finding effective, up-to-date information to support their response and most importantly adaptation strategies to ‘cope’ with the increasing climate risks remains a challenge . To fill this gap, the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT developed the Adaptation Atlas. Providing a full complement of nine interactive notebooks, including a climate risk mapping notebook, women exposure to climate hazards notebook, and an African-focused climate datasets system, among others, the tool adds breadth and depth to the library of decision support tools!
What Made This Training Different
This was hands-on training where the participants directly engaged with the tool. The working sessions, conducted mostly in French, were organized in four (4) breakout groups, each tasked with reviewing the notebooks over the 2-and-a-half-days. The aim of this exercise was to assess the notebooks and provide a summary of the following feedback themes: Usefulness of the Atlas, Strength of the Atlas, Weaknesses, and Areas of Improvement.
Overall feedback on the Adaptation Atlas
- It is specifically designed for the agricultural sector: it will enable advocacy work to be carried out in the context of legal reform, political programs, etc.
- Access to certain data is made easier thanks to the tool.
- The data in the atlas fills a gap in the agricultural sector; we will need this data to evaluate agricultural campaigns.
- It is an in-depth intellectual work, and a mechanism for updating data in emergencies will need to be put in place. Integration of IPC (Integrated Food Security Phase Classification) results for data updates; countries are ready to provide data and disseminate it at the national level.
- This is an interesting tool that helps to understand aspects related to climate change; proposing solutions for agriculture, data will need to be gradually updated and made available at the local level.
- It can be easily used by decision-makers and in the design of development and investment projects.
- It is a very interesting tool. In Rwanda, there is a strategy for sustainable agriculture, and the data from the atlas will enable this strategy to be implemented effectively.
- The tool comes at the right time because it solves concrete problems and allows for long-term planning. Based on the information in the Atlas, an investor can find the crop that should be grown in 10 years, for example.
- The tool will enable researchers and decision-makers to propose policies that consider the data in the Atlas.
- The importance of the tool lies in the fact that it must now be mastered to assist in early warning. Atlas will enable recommendations to be made to governments to legislate laws and raise awareness among farmers.
Real Commitments, Real Use Cases
One of the main objectives of the workshop was to identify practical use cases that could apply each notebook, tailored to the participants’ areas of work and/or projects within their national and local contexts. Some of which were: to design project proposals , to leverage the Atlas data in developing gender-responsive adaptation actions. The parliamentarians present also pledged to use the tool to test validity of their country legislations on agriculture and climate change. To track the implementation and impact of identified use cases, follow-up will be conducted through monthly virtual interviews for the next three months.
Why It Matters
With increasing climate change, African countries need to be well equipped with the right tools and resources to support evidence-based climate action The Adaptation Atlas not only provide data on risks but also provides an analysis of the most effective solutions and/or adaptation strategies. It is good potential, but it requires meaningful training and follow-through to achieve it. Events such as this jointly convened with partners such as AIMS demonstrate what can happen when teaching occurs within a practical context.