FOSTERING ACTIONABLE DEVELOPMENT AND COMMUNITY-BASED PRACTICES in SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
We believe in a collective effort to navigate pressing issues affecting people and society in a changing environment
Highlights
About Us
Alliance for Sustainable Development (ASDEV), is a Research Hub and Non-Profit Organization founded by a team of African researchers. ASDEV focuses on fostering community-based research and activities spanning across Food Systems, Human Health, Education, and Peace and Security.
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What We Do
In line with our vision to foster better food security and promote environmentally friendly agricultural practices, to ensure the sustainability of our environment, we are currently carrying out or have already completed the following projects.
Ongoing Projects
1) Youth Succession and Future of Small-Scale Fisheries in Cameroon
Coastal small-scale fishing plays an important role in terms of food and nutrition security, livelihoods, and employment for people in Cameroon’s coastal communities and beyond. Coastal fishing is more of a way of life for many coastal dwellers, constituting an integral part of their culture and traditions for several generations and attachment to the sea/ocean.
In this project, ASDEV is engaging extensively and interviewing fisherfolk in three major coastal fishing communities in Cameroon – Limbe, Kribi, and Douala. The project objectives are: (1) To understand if fisherfolk are willing to allow their children continue in the business and (2) Could digital and technological innovations encourage fisherfolk to continue fishing?
2) Agricultural Digitalization in Cameroon’s Livestock Sector
Increasing environmental stresses and systematic shocks are affecting the livestock sector in Cameroon at multiple levels. Frequent climatic stress from prolonged and changing dry and rainy seasons have changed the farming calendar and farm management activities of smallholder producers in Cameroon. This is in addition to systemic shocks from livestock pests and disease outbreaks leaving farmers frustrated and unable to make sufficient income.
In this project, ASDEV is working with Cattle farmers in Northern Cameroon, Poultry farmers in the South West and North West Regions, and Pig farmers in West Cameroon. The objectives of the project are: (1) To understand the awareness, readiness, and willingness to use digital agricultural tools; (2) Vulnerability – exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity to climatic changes; and (3) Various response strategies to pest and diseases outbreaks.
3) Food Systems Resilience to COVID-19 Shocks in Cameroon & Ghana
The COVID-19 pandemic has presented across scales and geographies the vulnerability of our food systems to systemic shock. How different food systems, especially those in Africa responded to this shock remains an understudied issue that needs urgent attention for better future policy direction and research needs. Here, ASDEV is currently working with survey data from more than 500 households in Ghana and Cameroon to understand their resilience and response to the impacts of COVID-19. The aim of the project is to present, using econometric modeling, the different levels of household food security amongst others in these countries.
Completed Projects
1) Cocoa Farming Systems in Cameroon
The growing concern over the sustainability of cocoa farming systems has severe implications for global food security and cocoa farmers’ livelihood sustenance in rural communities in Africa. The rising global demand for cocoa beans and their byproducts is considered a crucial path to curb the poverty trap of cocoa farmers in rural areas through income generation from cocoa farming activities.
Adopting and implementing sustainable management practices in the cocoa sector will increase cocoa output and alleviate poverty. However, researchers and policymakers have put little effort into place in Sub-Saharan Africa to address why farmers’ current attainable cocoa quality and yield levels are far below their potential yield levels. ASDEV carried out a study using household survey data from 201 cocoa farm households to probe into the different management practices farmers use to improve cocoa bean quality and quantity amidst existing climate challenges.
A) Effect of Farmers’ Management Practices on Safety and Quality Standards of Cocoa Production: A Structural Equation Modeling Approach.
Read full article on sustainable cocoa production and quality standards
B) Cocoa Production Under Climate Variability and Farm Management Challenges: Some Farmers' Perspectives
Read full article on sustainable cocoa production and climate change
2) COVID-19 and Small-Scale Fisheries in Africa
COVID-19 presented myriad challenges to different sectors including the fisheries. In this project ASDEV collaborated with fisherfolks in Cameroon and Liberia to understand the impacts of the pandemic to the fishery value chain. Fish harvesters, fishmongers, and fish consumers were interviewed in 2020 to explore how the pandemic has impacted their activities.
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Alliance for Sustainable Development (ASDEV)
Buea, South West Region, Cameroon