Agriculture is essential to the economies of East African countries. Climate change, with its effects on temperature and precipitation, threatens this important economic activity.
How to foster agricultural development and food security in East Africa as the effects of climate change become more serious is the subject of the study East African Agriculture and Climate Change: A Comprehensive Analysis. The authors develop several weather-based scenarios for how climate change might affect countries in the region between now and 2050.
National contributors from Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Madagascar, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda review the scenario results for their countries and propose a variety of policies to counter the effects of climate change on agriculture and food security. These policies include greater investment in agricultural research and extension, equitable access to land and inputs such as seeds and fertilizer, expanded irrigation, and improved infrastructure. Read more at IFPRI's blog where this article was originally published.