Agriculture is an increasingly risky business in much of the world, including the West African region. The World Bank has developed an Agricultural Risk Management (ARM) framework that assesses risks in systemic production, markets, and enabling environments to understand their total sectoral impacts and to prioritize them. Prioritizing risks improves targeting of risk management measures so that scarce resources can be allocated where they have the most impact. It also helps identify how to align other agriculture, environment, and social protection policies to manage existing risks. These risks are usually identified and managed at national levels, and the three key types are production risks, market risks, and enabling environment risks. This report focuses on how West African countries can benefit from collaboration in managing agrifood system risks and on the resulting need to adapt a regional lens to the ARM framework. Since both crop-specific growing areas and the risks they face often span national borders, there are substantial advantages that can be gained by stronger collaboration. There is a need to build layered approaches to manage risk that combine risk-mitigating, risk-transfer, and risk-coping instruments. These risk management approaches are needed within countries, with regional approaches building on national efforts. This report provides a foundational analysis to begin identifying needed actions for West African countries and at regional levels.

The first of three books in IFPRI's climate change in Africa series, West African Agriculture and Climate Change: A Comprehensive Analysis examines the food security threats facing 11 of the countries that make up West Africa -- Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo -- and explores how climate change will increase the efforts needed to achieve sustainable food security throughout the region. West Africa's population is expected to grow at least through mid-century. The region will also see income growth. Both will put increased pressure on the natural resources needed to produce food, and climate change makes the challenges greater. West Africa is already experiencing rising temperatures, shifting precipitation patterns, and increasing extreme events. Without attention to adaptation, the poor will suffer. Through the use of hundreds of scenario maps, models, figures, and detailed analysis, the editors and contributors of West African Agriculture and Climate Change present plausible future scenarios that combine economic and biophysical characteristics to explore the possible consequences for agriculture, food security, and resources management to 2050. They also offer recommendations to national governments and regional economic agencies already dealing with the vulnerabilities of climate change and deviations in environment. Decisionmakers and researchers will find West African Agriculture and Climate Change a vital tool for shaping policy and studying the various and likely consequences of climate change.

Sahelian West Africa has recovered from the disastrous droughts of the 1970s and 1980s. People have learned to adapt to risk and uncertainty in fragile dryland environments. They, as well as global change scientists, are worried about the impact of climate change on these West African drylands. What do the experiences of the last thirty years say about the preparedness for higher temperatures, lower rainfall, and even more variability? Detailed studies on Dryland West Africa as a whole, and on Burkina Faso, Mali and Northern Ghana in particular show an advanced coping behaviour and increased adaptation, but also major differences in vulnerability and coping potential. Climate change preparedness programmes have only just started and require more robust support, and more specific social targeting, for a population which is rapidly growing, even more rapidly urbanising, and further integrating in a globalised economy. This book is the first of its kind with a comprehensive analysis of climate change experiences in West African drylands, with attention for pathways of change and the diversity of adaptation options available. This book is of interest to scientists studying global and climate change, especially dealing with issues of adaptation. Social scientists, economists, geographers and policy makers concerned with West Africa should also read this book.

This paper examines change in West African agricultural systems, the major challenges being faced by smallholders in the region and pathways for the future, given international pressure and domestic restraints. It aims to strengthen debate on West African agriculture, the role of family farms and trade policy at national, regional and global levels. It identifies and documents how agricultural patterns and livelihoods are evolving in different parts of the region, identifies winners and losers, outlines the impact of OECD trade and agricultural policy on farming livelihoods, and highlights the opportunities for producer organisations to influence policy design and negotiations in partnership with diverse organisations and interests in West Africa.

The future of West Africa depends on the capacity of its agriculture to ensure the food security of the population, which should double in the next 20 years, while facing up to the new risks resulting from climate warming. Indeed, the changes in temperature and precipitations already operating and that should become more marked will have serious effects on agricultural production and water resources in this part of Africa in the near future. One of the keys to meeting this new challenge is the adaptation of rural societies to climate risks. To gain better knowledge of the potential, processes and barriers, this book analyses recent and ongoing trends in the climate and the environment and examines how rural societies perceive and integrate them: what are the impacts of these changes, what vulnerabilities are there but also what new opportunities do they bring? How do the populations adapt and what innovations do they implement—while the climate-induced effects interact with the social, political, economic and technical changes that are in motion in Africa? By associating French and African scientists (climatologists, agronomists, hydrologists, ecologists, demographers, geographers, anthropologists, sociologists and others) in a multidisciplinary approach, the book makes a valuable contribution to better anticipation of climatic risks and the evaluation of African societies to stand up to them.

Cover Crops in West Africa Contributing to Sustainable Agriculture