Review of the Learning Alliance for Adaptation in Smallholder Agriculture

The Learning Alliance for Adaptation in Smallholder Agriculture is a knowledge platform which leverages the strengths, opportunities and diverse audiences of the International Fund for Agriculture (IFAD) and the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS). The objective of the Learning Alliance is to produce and disseminate evidence for informed policy and implementation of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) interventions by capturing, analyzing and communicating lessons emerging from the IFAD supported global Adaptation in Smallholder Agriculture Programme (ASAP). The Learning Alliance strives to enable agricultural development policy-makers and practitioners make science-based decisions in the context of climate change. The underlying assumption of the Learning Alliance is that the “provision of demand-driven research outputs to policy-makers and practitioners is a key mechanism for improving the effectiveness of adaptation actions among ultimate beneficiaries, in this case smallholder farmers”. The review aims to identify areas for improvement to achieve the planned outcomes of the Learning Alliance more effectively. It provides recommendations to inform a further phase, based on the experience of those closely involved in the knowledge production and implementation of the Alliance

The Prospects of M-Voting Implementation in Nigeria

Since independence, an average of 50% of registered voters participates in voting [1]. Similarly, an increasing rate of apathy was observed between the electorate and the elect, which was not unconnected with lack of transparency, accountability, and probity on the part of government [2]. Thus the electorate did not see the need to subject itself to any stress. Consequently, government is very committed to implementing the forth coming elections through e-voting. This paper proposes the prospects of m-voting implementation in Nigeria through the use of mobile phones, PDAs, etc. with guaranteed security, secrecy, and convenience in a democratization process. It also reviews the level of adoption of GSM in Nigeria, the implication of voting through the GSM, and finally introducing m-voting innovation in the voting process to increase voters’ access and participation rate in election

Putting banana-coffee intercropping research into action

Research of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and its partners shows that growing coffee and banana together is generating >50% more income for smallholder farmers and can help them cope with the effects of climate change. However, turning research into action on the ground requires effective dialogue and communication between researchers and policy makers. This study looks at how well informed government bodies, private sector and non-profit actors were of IITA’s research and to what extent the practice has been adopted