Justice and sustainability key as project seeks to improve food production systems in Sub-Saharan Africa
With Sub-Saharan Africa's population now exceeding 1 billion, the demand for food in the region has significantly increased. In combination with many people migrating from rural to urban areas in search of better opportunities, this puts rural agricultural communities and ecosystems under pressure to supply more food. But an increase in food production comes at a heavy cost—natural landscapes are used for agriculture, leading to soil degradation and overexploitation of water resources.
Smallholder farmers—particularly women and indigenous farmers—bear the brunt of the environmental impacts of agricultural encroachment and pollution caused by the growing food demand. Conflicts over the land they farm and water resources they use can result in displacement, loss of land tenure and restricted access to essential resources, affecting their food security and livelihoods.
Partnering for sustainable solutions
In response, there is a growing call for an urgent shift towards more socially just and ecologically sustainable approaches to food production in Sub-Saharan Africa. With funding from IHE Delft’s Water and Development Partnership Programme, a group of partner organisations formed the Policy Learning, Local Knowledge and Advocacy (POLKA) project. With a strong advocacy component, this project works to address the socio-environmental challenges in food production systems through joint learning, research and educational activities.
“These problems require a justice and sustainability approach to guide actions at different levels,” said Gabriela Cuadrado-Quesada, Project Coordinator and Senior Lecturer in Water Rights and Justice at IHE Delft Institute for Water Education.
“Often, there are mismatches between what happens at the local level, where policies are expected to be implemented, and the national level, where policies are conceived and formulated, with policies often not helpful for addressing the issues farming communities face.”
Connecting practice and policy
The POLKA project aims to strengthen the connection between practice and policy for improved and inclusive agricultural development. Through participatory processes, the project team facilitates dialogues, interactions and knowledge exchange among actors at both levels.
“We bring together farming communities, scientists and policy makers to jointly investigate the options for change towards more equitable and sustainable methods of producing food in this region,” Cuadrado-Quesada said.
The project works across multiple countries in East Africa including Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia and South Sudan, engaging different stakeholders in co-creation activities to address the challenges facing these smallholder farmers and indigenous food producers.
“We bring together farming communities, scientists and policy makers to jointly investigate the options for change towards more equitable and sustainable methods of producing food in this region.”
One of the issues the project is looking at is how gender influences local agricultural practices. For example, women in the Masai Community in Kenya were traditionally caretakers with no source of income, while men primarily depended on raising livestock for their livelihoods. Now, with agricultural activities on the rise in this community, women are taking on the role of picking the harvests which has enabled them to earn income.
“Through the POLKA project, we are seeking to gain more knowledge on how the availability of water and the introduction of irrigation systems have influenced the Masai Community, especially in terms of gender dynamics” said Rosemary Matheka, Tutorial Fellow in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Meru University of Science and Technology, one of the partner organisations.
POLKA uses indigenous wisdom and knowledge, drawing lessons from successful approaches in Central America and India in which diverse groups collaborated on food and water security. These examples range from small-scale rain-fed agriculture and horticulture in wetlands to community-based groundwater recharge and farmer-led irrigation development in semi-arid areas.
By championing bottom-up learning and participatory decision-making, the project aims to support farming communities’ efforts to shape policy discussions towards a more inclusive and sustainable approach to agricultural development.
Partner organisations in the POLKA project include the universities of Meru (Kenya), Makerere (Uganda), Adama Science and Technology (Ethiopia), Juba (South Sudan) and UPEACE (Costa Rica) as well as the Chad River Basin Commission, and three non-governmental organisations—ATREE (India), Los Tucanes (Costa Rica) and AMUDA (Costa Rica).
Learn more about POLKA
POLKA works to shape a future where smallholder farmers can produce food in ecological, sustainable, and socially just ways that ensure socio-economic prosperity and food sovereignty, while safeguarding important ecosystem functions.
About the programme
The Water and Development Partnership Programme envisions a world where inclusive and diverse partnerships and marginalised knowledges transform the ways we know, use, share and care for water. To achieve this, the programme funds bold, creative and transdisciplinary projects that combine research, education and capacity strengthening activities aimed at creating a peaceful, just and sustainable world. Implemented with the support of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the programme supports organisations in non-European, low- and middle-income countries as they strengthen their capacity to manage water in sustainable and inclusive ways.
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