African Agriculture Adaptation ATLAS

Budget	$ 3,220,152
Location	wAfrica (Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, Namibia, Zambia, Ghana, Nigeria, Malawi, Mozambique, Senegal, Zimbabwe)
Outreach	The African Agriculture Adaptation ATLAS project direct beneficiaries are African government bodies and stakeholder institutions serving smallholder agricultural producers within the 13 Sub-Saharan countries that this project serves.
Partners	Sustainable Agriculture Foundation -Africa, African Group of Negotiators Expert Support (AGNES), The African Network of Policy Research Institutes (ANAPRI), Regional Centre for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD), Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Institute (ATI)

Context:

The Gates Foundation Agriculture team has supported development of an online African Agriculture Adaptation Atlas, which is now publicly available with updates occurring throughout 2024 and 2025. In addition to this platform development, the agriculture team is now supporting a round of user testing of the Atlas platform with African stakeholders and decision makers. 

The project seeks to support African stakeholders and decision makers in adopting and testing the Adaptation Atlas for their own stated purpose and gather their feedback. In the long term, it’s envisioned that many users may simply be able to reference the website to acquire the information they need. However, while the platform is still under development, it’s anticipated that greater value for users will be realized if adoption and testing of the Adaptation Atlas are financially supported. This structured piloting and user testing provides an opportunity to more deeply understand the use cases and user requirements while facilitating feedback and guidance between the user and development teams. This investment will result in a first phase of user implementation data, including their level of effort/personnel time/infrastructure to adopt the platform, the details of the use case, and their outcomes from using the Atlas. 

We hope to: (1) Understand how stakeholders use the Atlas and where they see the greatest value, (2) Capture the potential impact on small scale producers of decisions informed by Atlas during the project period, and (3) Learn from user experiences to improve the Atlas product while it is still under development.

Objectives:

To support the adoption and testing of the Adaptation Atlas by African stakeholders and decision makers by

• Supporting the Adoption and Testing of Adaptation ATLAS
• Providing Training and Learning Workshops
• Aligning project Documentation
• Enhancing Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) and Gender Integration
• Disseminating Knowledge and Information
• Ensuring Financial Compliance Management

Key Activities:

• Develop and refine methodologies; create and test data collection tools
• Organize and conduct training sessions for project teams and sub-awardees; host the first learning workshop
• Gather feedback through surveys, interviews, and scheduled meetings
• Develop and disseminate standard operating procedures and operating materials
• Conduct gender analysis; develop and document integration strategy
• Compile and synthesize project data; prepare and submit the final report

Achievements (so far):

• All key project partners have been contracted and engagements formalized
• Project inception meeting has been held and resolutions adopted
• An expert’s workshop has been conducted that tested the Adaptation Atlas tools applicability, developed training guides and enhanced the tools
• African stakeholders and decision makers have been trained on the adaption Atlas
• A refined Project Results framework has been developed and adopted
• The inaugural African Agriculture Adaptation Learning Workshop has been held