Africa in a Changing Climate: Redefining Africa’s Agrarian Development Policies

Abstract

The evidence of a changing climate reveals the reality and omnipresence of climate’s influence to diverse human societies and the natural environment. The acknowledgement of global warming and a changing climate not only reinforce existing constraints to producer groups in Africa, but also present new challenges that shock and stress socioeconomic sectors, such as agriculture, which are inherently linked to climate and associated environmental factors. Correcting the emerging challenges would imply a need for rethinking beyond business as usual and a redefinition of policy designs, plans and implementation in Africa. This chapter reviews the need to elucidate new policy shifts to maintain human security and to enhance levels of social and economic development. It highlights a redefinition of approaches employed by managers of the agricultural sector in enforcing mitigation and reinforcing stakeholders’ adaptation to climate change. The expected outcome should be the empowerment of rural areas and producer groups to recover from stresses and shocks in a timely manner, and maintain or enhance their adaptive capabilities. For this empowerment to be resilient and sustainable, the policy preferences of national managers should incorporate improved governance and accountable decision-making processes, incorporate mainstream climate change issues into planning processes, empower vulnerable communities and boundary partners with relevant good quality climate information such as early warning and so on, and integrate climate change impacts into macroeconomic management.