This report is part of a series of country level analyses prepared by the FAO Resilience Team Eastern Africa (RTEA) and the Resilience Analysis and Policies (RAP) team. The series aims at providing programming and policy guidance to policy makers, practitioners, UN agencies, NGO and other stakeholders by identifying the key factors that contribute to the resilience of households in food insecure countries and regions.The analysis is largely based on the use of the FAO Resilience Index Measurement and Analysis II (RIMA-II) tool. Latent variable models and regression analysis have been adopted. Findings are integrated with geo-spatial variables.

The INFORMED programme, implemented by FAO from 2015 to 2019, was designed to contribute to “increasing the resilience of livelihoods to threats and crises and contributing to the reduction of food insecurity and malnutrition”. The programme’s increased focused on Early Warning for Early Action (EWEA) was very relevant to fill existing gaps with a comparative advantage for FAO in slow onset and food chain crises contexts. Promoting the use of pre-agreed plans and pre-identified anticipatory actions, the project effectively improved risk analysis and decision making, including through the Global Report on Food Crises, and increased access to appropriate financing instruments, while the EWEA country toolkit initial positive spinoffs remain to be built on.Efforts to support resilience measurement and analyses by applying the resilience index measurement and analysis (RIMA) methodology are relevant given the significant investments in resilience programming and the continuing methodological gaps. However, although RIMA provides a basis for creating evidence on resilience investments, and FAO has been an important pioneer in resilience measurement, a wider system supporting resilience analysis is needed, based on a range of methodologies, responding to the information needs of decision-makers. Also, RIMA baseline lacks sufficient detail to allow articulating the feasibility of possible response options and have a practical impact on planning decisions; it has not demonstrated its added value over pre-existing food security, nutrition and risk indicators to help target interventions, and is not well adapted as an impact evaluation tool.Assessing INFORMED results against its intention to support knowledge production and sharing, to promote the replication of good practices and circular learning, the evaluation questioned the choice of creating a new knowledge management platform versus adopting a collaborative approach building on similar initiatives’ strengths. Poor strategic choices represented a fundamental constraint to reach intended objectives, such as, an insufficient understanding of users explaining the difficulty to trace the uptake and use of knowledge products. Nevertheless, the evaluation recognized the progressive investments in knowledge management and sizeable accomplishments of a relatively small team.The evaluation suggests strengthening capacities for the production and dissemination of forecast, scenario-based early warning as a basis for early action; developing a corporate strategy for partnering to strengthen early warning system capacities at various levels; promoting the use of a toolkit of approaches and investing in a knowledge management function dedicated to capturing and disseminating lessons on the effectiveness of EWEA and resilience interventions.

The Livestock for Health (L4H) project is a collaborative effort between the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the Marsabit County Government, the National Government of Kenya, the National Drought Management Authority (NDMA) and Washington State University (WSU). The project was made possible through the support provided by the Office of Technical and Program Quality, Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), to determine the cost-effectiveness of livestock feeding interventions and nutritional counselling in reducing the risk of malnutrition among children and women in pastoral communities during the critical dry periods. The project was designed as a cluster randomized control trial with two intervention arms and one control group. Households in Intervention Arm 1 receive livestock feeds sufficient to maintain two tropical livestock units (TLUs) for 90 days during critical dry periods or drought and 7–14 days into the rain season. Households in Intervention Arm 2 receive similar livestock feeds and regular nutritional counselling carried out by trained community healthcare workers. Households in Arm 3 are the control group and do not receive any of the two interventions during the study period. The results from this baseline survey will be essential for comparing with other data which will be collected during the routine household data collection visits (six week follow-up and quarterly household visits) for monitoring trends in household milk yield, milk consumption (amount and frequency) and nutritional status across the intervention and control arms of the study over the study period. At baseline, both the intervention and control arms were comparable in household demographics, socio-economic characteristics, household livestock ownership, milk production and consumption, and maternal and child nutritional status and health. Additionally, the high prevalence of malnutrition in this study population and the data on health and intervention costs which will be collected in this study will allow for a cost-effectiveness analysis to determine if livestock feeding interventions and nutritional counselling are cost-effective in reducing the risk of malnutrition among children and women in pastoral communities during the critical dry periods.

Climate change, a global phenomenon, has attracted scientists to contribute in anticipatory research to mitigate adverse impacts, which are more important for horticulture, considering that the scenario is in the midst of revolution, reaching the production level of 250 million tonnes in India. Impacts of climate variability have, invariably, profound influence on production and quality. An understanding of the impacts and relevant adaptation strategies are of foremost importance to sustain the productivity and profitability of horticulture crops in the climate change scenario, which necessitates synthesis of current knowledge to develop strategies for adaptation and mitigation to achieve climate-resilient horticulture. The book Climate-resilient horticulture: adaptation and mitigation strategies addresses the effects of climate change on different horticultural crops and focuses on the adaptation strategies based on the scientific knowledge generated by the experts in different agro-climatic regions in India. Issues have been covered in various chapters to make this book a treasure of knowledge in horticulture vis-a-vis climate change. Some of the crops included in the book are apple, grapes, cashew, banana, litchi, mango, coconut, oil palm, potato, tomato, cucurbits and flowers. In addition to strategies to be adapted in these crops, various other important aspects like carbon sequestration, pests and diseases, and urban landscaping are also covered in the book. Information on climatic risks and adaptation options for resilience in horticultural crops and future strategies and information on pest and disease dynamics on horticultural crops in relation to climate change and available mitigation strategies have also been documented. The book is edited by Dr H P Singh, a visionary leader, and his colleagues, which will be highly valuable to research workers, students, policy planners and farmers to understand and checkmate the adverse effect of climate change, so as to convert weakness into opportunity.

This book presents key concepts, information and principles that should underlie the practice of adult education in African contexts. It assumes that adult educators should have a historical perspective on the current educational context, understand how the colonial experience has impacted on indigenous traditions and be aware of the philosophical underpinnings of adult education activities. The chapters introduce the foundations and history of adult education in Africa; philosophy and adult education; socio-cultural, political and economic environments; opportunities and access for adult learners; gender and development in adult education; adult education as a developing profession; information and communication technology; globalization and adult education; and policies and structures of lifelong learning

The dry forests and woodlands of Sub-Saharan Africa are major ecosystems, with a broad range of strong economic and cultural incentives for keeping them intact. However, few people are aware of their importance, compared to tropical rainforests, despite them being home to more than half of the continent's population. This unique book brings together scientific knowledge on this topic from East, West, and Southern Africa and describes the relationships between forests, woodlands, people and their livelihoods. Dry forest is defined as vegetation dominated by woody plants, primarily trees, the canopy of which covers more than 10 per cent of the ground surface, occurring in climates with a dry season of three months or more. This broad definition - wider than those used by many authors - incorporates vegetation types commonly termed woodland, shrubland, thicket, savanna, wooded grassland, as well as dry forest in its strict sense. The book provides a comparative analysis of management experiences from the different geographic regions, emphasizing the need to balance the utilization of dry forests and woodland products between current and future human needs. Further, the book explores the techniques and strategies that can be deployed to improve the management of African dry forests and woodlands for the benefit of all, but more importantly, the communities that live off these vegetation formations. Thus, the book lays a foundation for improving the management of dry forests and woodlands for the wide range of products and services they provide.