SOWEDA is encouraging farmers in the South West Region to adopt sustainable practices. Farming is a lucrative occupation in the South West Region, but the impacts of climate change remain a serious threat. The climate risks range from intense droughts to unpredictable rain patterns, and their impacts are very problematic including increased incidents of pest and diseases and post-harvest losses. Nevertheless, the South West Development Authority is playing a key role in building farmer’s resilience to climate change. In that light, SOWEDA organized a 2-day training workshop on Climate-Smart Agricultural (CSA) practices. Over 30 farmers and representatives of cooperatives from Mamfe attended this training on the 28 - 29 of March 2023 in Mamfe.

Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is an integrated approach to managing landscapes to help agricultural methods, livestock and crops to adapt to the effects of climate change and, where possible, counteract it by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture, at the same time taking into account the growing world population to ensure food security. Thus, the emphasis is not simply on carbon farming or sustainable agriculture, but also on increasing agricultural productivity.

The training organized by SOWEDA in Mamfe to help the farmers, was broken down into a variety of segments.

·        Introduction and general overview of CSA

·        What CSA is

·        Stakeholders and Roles

·        Key issues

-Climate change adaptation

-Climate change mitigation and

-Productivity enhancement

Farmers expressed their joy and gratitude to SOWEDA and called the training a “timely intervention” as they had already begun to see some of the basic threats of climate change on their activities. It has always been SOWEDA’s ultimate goal to improve the lives of the rural population of the South West Region.