APA – Dakar (Senegal) – Despite its low greenhouse gas emissions, Africa bears the full brunt of the harmful effects of climate change.
By Abdourahmane Diallo
As the 28th United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP 28) on climate change continues in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, African leaders and experts in Senegal decided to reflect on the continent’s climatic future in relation to food security. In Mbour, a town about 80 kilometers from the Senegalese capital, some thirty stakeholders from research institutions, universities, governments and national meteorological services attended the opening of a regional training workshop on crop modeling tools and models on Monday, December 4.
Launched by the STRATADAPT-Mali ClimBer and AICCRA (Accelerating the Impact of Climate Research for Africa) projects, the initiative aims to define climate adaptation strategies for agriculture using the AquaCrop tool. This tool is a crop growth simulation model developed by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) to address food security issues and assess the impact of environment and management on agricultural production.
In Africa, the effects of climate change, combined with population growth and competition for water between agriculture, industry and human consumption, are creating an unprecedented crisis for this vital resource. Yet this model, which guarantees water and crop productivity, is largely absent from the practices of agricultural producers in West Africa. “Crop models are very important decision-making tools, but they are underused in Africa compared to other countries or continents,” laments Madina Diancounda, a postdoctoral researcher at the Leibniz Research Centre for Agricultural Landscapes (ZALF) in Germany.
Water stress by 2025?
According to the FAO, two-thirds of the world’s population could face water stress by 2025. Agriculture, which is essential to human survival, could be one of the sectors most affected. To anticipate this, the UN agency has developed the AquaCrop model, which aims to meet the challenges of food security and environmental preservation to maintain good agricultural production.
“The aim of this kind of workshop is to develop the capacity of our partners and researchers in the region to use these models, to calibrate them themselves, to test them and to test them in the field to see to what extent they can generate lower-cost solutions. This will also allow us to see how they need to be interpreted to avoid misuse,” said Pierre Sibiry Traoré, Senegal Representative of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT).
Until December 10, these African development actors will be trained in the collection and analysis of climate data, the simulation of crop yields with Aquacrop, the study of the impact of climate change with the same tool, and CLIMTAG, a digital platform for agro-climatic planning in the context of climate change.
According to Ms. Diancounda, this week of discussions will raise awareness of the importance of using this model, which can be used to limit or reduce climate risks, anticipate certain risks and make predictions.
“We will have theoretical and practical sessions to enable them to fully understand and use the models. This will ensure that they can use these tools in their daily work,” said the ZALF researcher behind the project.
A tool adapted to West Africa
As a tool for simulating the water yield response of herbaceous crops, AquaCrop is well suited to climatic conditions where water is a limiting factor for agricultural production. It combines balance, accuracy, simplicity and robustness. The model uses a small number of explicit parameters and mainly intuitive input data that can be determined by simple methods.
“The appeal of Aquacrop lies in its simplicity and ease. Often, in data-poor environments, it doesn’t make sense to develop an extremely sophisticated model because it requires a lot of data. You won’t be able to feed it properly, and you’ll be feeding it data of dubious quality. As a result, the results it produces will also be of dubious quality. In this context, a simpler model can be more interesting because it’s less data intensive. It is capable of producing results that are just as robust as a complicated model, but at a much lower cost,” Traoré said.
As open source, AquaCrop can be used free of charge. What’s more, the source code can be accessed and redeveloped on other platforms or incorporated into other architectures. “It’s a simple, free model that is of interest to our regions,” said ICRISAT’s representative in Senegal, where Dr. Omonlola Nadine Worou, AICCRA’s local scientific coordinator, welcomed the collaborative momentum among the various players.
She took the opportunity to invite the participants to replicate the results of the training in their home countries, for the benefit of the populations who, in most cases, depend on agriculture for their livelihoods.
ARD/odl/te/lb/as/APA