Date: 24th July 2025 || Time: 4:00pm – 5:30pm EAT

Innovative Approaches to Inclusive Agricultural Technologies for Sustainable Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

This webinar will explore how inclusive agricultural innovation can enhance climate resilience, reduce rural poverty, and promote sustainable development in Sub-Saharan Africa. The speaker will draw on his extensive research and experience in agricultural economics to expound promising approaches such as digital tools, index insurance, and social protection linkages that support smallholder farmers and marginalized communities in Africa. The discussion will highlight actionable strategies for ensuring that technological advancements in agriculture are accessible, equitable, and scalable in the face of growing climate challenges.

The webinar will also serve as the official launch for the ‘Innovating Resilience: Advancing Inclusive Agricultural Innovation for Climate Resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa’ Research Coordination Area (RCA). This RCA seeks to advance conversations around inclusive agricultural innovations for climate resilience in sub-Sahara Africa with particular emphasis on gender, inequalities and promoting the production of underutilized and indigenous crops through agrobiodiversity, using agricultural innovation systems approach. This RCA aligns with the AfricaLics agenda, Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and the African Union Agenda 2063 by contributing to knowledge production and dissemination in the field of Innovation and Development (I&D), build (strengthen) research capacity and collaboration among scholars, and providing data and evidence to inform policy decisions on the continent.

Keynote Speaker

Prof. Michael R. Carter is a distinguished professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of California, Davis and honorary professor of economics at the University of Cape Town. Carter is director of the RIF and former director of the MRR Innovation Lab. Author of numerous scientific publications, Carter’s current research projects examine poverty dynamics and productive social safety nets, evaluation of interventions to boost small farm uptake of improved technologies, and feature a suite of projects that design, pilot and evaluate index insurance contracts as mechanisms to alleviate chronic poverty and deepen agricultural and rural financial markets. Carter is an elected fellow of NBER (the National Bureau of Economic Research), BREAD (Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development) and the American Agricultural Economics Association. He has conducted several projects across Africa.

Moderator (RCA Lead)

Dr. Mercy F Salami (Senior Lecturer, Department of Agricultural Economics and Farm Management, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria). Her main area of research has been in Development Economics. Under this major research area, she focuses more on issues of gender, climate change, land economics and governance, poverty, food security, and nutrition and, impact assessment, with a special focus on Nigeria.

RCA team members

Other team members supporting the RCA include;

	Prof. Opeyemi E. Ayinde (Professor of Agricultural Economics and Vice-president of the African Association of Agricultural Economists, Department of Agricultural Economics and Farm Management, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Ilorin);
	Dr. Caleb Adelowo (Deputy director of research at the Technology Innovation and Enterprise Studies Department of the National Centre for Technology Management, Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria);
	Rosalyne N. N. Baddoo (Project Manager for ECo-Inveg, a USAID Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Horticulture Project, implemented by the Postharvest Innovation Hub, Department of Crop Science, University of Ghana)
	Ann Numi (Research fellow at the African Centre for Technology Studies, ACTS, Science Technology, Innovation & Knowledge and Society (STIKS) Programme & Visiting Research Associate at the SARChI-Trilateral Research Chair in Transformative Innovation (TRCTI ), University of Johannesburg).

How to register