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Many Africans Already Hold Answers to Mitigating Against Climate Change

Often building on indigenous knowledge, farmers all over the African continent have assembled a tremendous mass of successful experiences and innovations in agriculture. These efforts have steadily been developed over the past few decades following the droughts that impacted many countries in the 1970s and 1980s.

Millions of African farmers don’t need to adapt to climate change. They have done that already.

Like many others across the continent, indigenous communities in Ethiopia’s Gamo Highlands are well prepared against climate variations.

The high biodiversity, which forms the basis of their traditional enset-based agricultural systems, allows them to easily adjust their farming practices, including the crops they grow, to climate variations.

People in Gamo are also used to managing their environment and natural resources in sound and sustainable ways, rooted in ancestral knowledge and customs, which makes them resilient to floods or droughts.

Although African indigenous systems are often perceived as backward by central governments, they have a lot of learning to offer to the rest of the world when contemplating the challenges of climate change and food insecurity.

Andrea Moroni

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© 2017 by Developing Radio Partners.

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