Press and News Onto the next phase of AICCRA: putting food systems in focus for African resilience
What happens when a climate innovation proves it works? For most projects, that's where the story ends. For AICCRA, it's where the next chapter begins. In Nairobi, partners gathered to reflect on 5 years of impact and chart a path to scale climate smart food system solutions across Africa.
Climate science has never been more advanced. For most smallholder farmers across sub-Saharan Africa, it has never felt more out of reach. That gap is what AICCRA was built to close. Over five years, the project connected CGIAR research with national meteorological agencies, extension systems, digital advisory platforms and local partners, getting reliable climate information and proven climate smart solutions into the hands of over 11 million farmers across six African countries. What made it different was the deliberate focus on scaling by making sure knowledge didn't sit in research institutions but got embedded in national systems, investment plans and the decisions of real farmers in difficult seasons. The World Bank called it a first of its kind partnership.
On June 5th in Nairobi, scientists, farmers, policymakers, development partners, regional organizations and private sector actors came together not only to celebrate and disperse, but to ask a harder question: how do proven climate smart solutions reach millions more farmers across Africa and actually stick?
Under the theme "Bankable Breakthroughs: How to Scale Agri-Food Systems Innovations in Africa," the event was a deliberate handover: AICCRA passing the baton to AICCRA-FSRP IV, with a clear focus on moving what works out of pilots and into policies, institutions, investment pipelines and national systems.
The conversations were candid, where farmers spoke plainly about navigating seasons that are no longer predictable; and the partners pushed on what it genuinely takes to turn evidence into investment. Five years of work and millions of farmers reached. But ask anyone in that room and they'll tell you, that the legacy is bigger than the numbers. Resilience at this scale grows when science, institutions, finance and partnership move together, and when African institutions are in the lead.
Two legacies walked out of that room: an Innovation Catalogue of proven climate-smart solutions ready to scale, and a Scaling Playbook, five years of hard learning turned into a practical guide for what comes next.
The baton has simply changed hands honestly; the work isn't finished.
