Action Summit in East Africa
Lead Organization:
Meridian Institute
Partner Organizations:
This project brings together values-aligned individuals and organizations with complementary expertise:
1) Nourishment Economies Coalition (NEC), led by David Strelneck: Engage and support leading East African social entrepreneurs with proven track records; Organize and facilitate the Action Summit; Provide economic insights to link agroecological practices to development opportunities; Offer project management and fiscal sponsorship; Ongoing engagement in Uganda and Kenya, as African participants adapt and deploy their locally-led development strategies.
2) Independent African Participants: Independent African participants experienced with smallholder farmers and some of these topics, including NEC members and TIFS affiliates in East Africa (e.g. Shona, Rootical, AFSA, and Biovision with whom NourishN/NEC also works elsewhere) and GCRFS grantees such as Manor House and FIPS-Africa.
3) Designers and Scientists: Collaborate with the Soil Health Tool Kit team, Kenyan and U.S. designers, to inspire innovation.
4) Young African Changemakers: Engage youth leaders from Ashoka’s African Youth Venture initiative and URDT’s locally-led programs to inject creativity and energy into proposals.
5) Funders: Involve representatives of 2-3 funders to explore activating the value propositions of agroecological farming initiatives.
Community of Practice:
Countries:
Kenya, Uganda, and Malawi
Duration:
5/2024—5/2025
Overview:
Agriculture offers solutions to a range of interconnected challenges, from biodiversity loss to water scarcity to nutritional deficits, and—when done well—from empowerment of women as change leaders to issues of cultural sovereignty and self-determination. Smallholder farmers who implement agroecological principles often sequester carbon, foster biodiversity, restore water cycles, improve health qualities of food, and maintain cultural and community values.
Such smallholder farmers have allies in social entrepreneurs who are innovating both commercial and nonprofit models that turn the co-benefits of ecological farming into livelihood gains including economics and more. Together, agroecological smallholder farmers and social entrepreneurs can increase their large positive effect on Earth’s ecological, social, and economic systems.
Both local and global benefits are at play. For example, carbon markets now enable carbon net-producers to buy credits which support those who are reducing emissions or sequestering carbon in some fashion. A system of biodiversity credits is also being established under the Global Biodiversity Framework to incentivize entities who demonstrate restorative or regenerative outcomes. Regional water authorities sometimes reward farmers and other land stewards who help restore and maintain watersheds, including soil qualities and riparian habitat. Emerging science shows nutritional benefits of crops grown organically. The Nourishment Economies framework underlies this project.
While the track record of ecosystem service markets is generally poor when it comes to smallholder farmers, the potential is huge. At least one of the world’s leading examples originated in Africa, including the Community Markets for Conservation/COMACO, whose founder provided input to this project, and other African initiatives participating in this project illustrate the point, such as the smallholder farmer and carbon payment initiatives of the Akili Group in Kenya. At the same time, the disciplines of soil and biodiversity science now show direct connection to additional tangible benefits including human nutrition, local water cycles, overall landscape resilience, links between farming practices and food traditions and flavors, and more. Our examples show each of these benefits being put into action in discrete social and business initiatives, but seldom in a combined or methodical way.
We will combine these forces—smallholder farmers and those working with them, several noted African system-changing social entrepreneurs who have developed some of these innovative initiatives working with thousands of smallholders, a framework of practical economic insights into these multiple benefits such as carbon sequestration and increased nutrition, young African changemakers, and other great examples—to spark new direct actions and proposals in Africa. Our project team already works with each of these stakeholders and ideas separately. This project brings them together with an action-oriented agenda and some resources for the first time.
Grant Aims:
- Scale agroecological practices to improve soil, ecosystem, and human health.
- Leverage economic and systemic drivers to create incentives for sustainable farming.
- Spark enterprise startups and partnerships among stakeholders working with smallholder farmers.
- Generate actionable insights, foster enabling relationships, and develop innovative initiatives in East Africa.
Outputs and Outcomes:
Outputs:
- Convening key stakeholders, including smallholder farmers, social entrepreneurs, and young African changemakers, to collaborate on new initiatives.
- Organizing an Action Summit in East Africa, co-hosted by local partners, to drive actionable ideas.
- Developing insights and proposals for agroecological practices tied to carbon credits, biodiversity credits, and local economic systems.
- Supporting participants to adopt, adapt, and implement new ideas in their existing initiatives or launch new ventures.
Outcomes:
- Enhanced approaches and scalable new startups benefiting farmers, consumers, and stakeholders.
- New initiatives fostering agroecological practices, environmental restoration, and community resilience.
- Increased adoption, adaptation and implementation of new ideas into existing initiatives.
- Strengthened connections among African social entrepreneurs, global networks, and regional actors.
- Dissemination of key learnings and innovations to other regions worldwide.
- Creation of new and actionable insights sparked among these participants and in new geographies too.