The 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.
The RCA is led by 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, a Sub-Saharan African nation. 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) and 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).