Abstract:
Sustainable agricultural intensification (SAI) has the potential to increase food
security without detrimental effects on ecosystem services. However, adoption of
SAI practices across sub-Saharan Africa has not reached transformational numbers
to date. It is often hampered by lack of context-specific practices, sub-optimal
understanding of tradeoffs and synergies among stakeholders, and lack of
approaches that bring diverse evidence sources together with stakeholders to
collectively tackle complex problems. In this study, we asked three interconnected
questions: (i) What is the accessibility and use of evidence for SAI decision making;
(ii) What tools could enhance access and interaction with evidence for tradeoff
analysis; and (iii) Which stakeholders must be included? This study employed a
range of research and engagement methods including surveys, stakeholder
analysis, participatory trade-off assessments and co-design of decision dashboards
to better support evidence-based decision making in Zambia, Tanzania and
Ethiopia. At the inception, SAI evidence was accessible and used by less than half
of the decision makers across the three countries and online dashboards hold
promise to enhance access. Many of the stakeholders working on SAI were not
collaborating and tradeoff analysis was an under-utilized tool. Structured
engagement across multiple stakeholder groups with evidence is critical.
