BICEPS is contributing to the development of sustainable agriculture in Africa by leading the project “Building Digital Education of Indigenous/Heritage Crops for the Resilience of African Food Systems in the Climate Crisis” (2024-2025)

Building Digital Education of Indigenous/Heritage Crops for the Resilience of African Food Systems in the Climate Crisis

The project “Building Digital Education of Indigenous/Heritage Crops for the Resilience of African Food Systems in the Climate Crisis” aims to contribute to the development of sustainable agriculture in Africa, particularly in Ghana. Like other countries, Ghana is facing challenges caused by climate change that negatively affect food production. The project seeks to adapt Latvia’s experience in preserving and promoting heritage crops by creating a knowledge platform in Ghana. This platform will provide local farmers with insights into the cultivation and care of indigenous and/or heritage crops and emphasize the role of communities in maintaining such a knowledge platform in the long term.

The project aims to build a digital indigenous/heritage crop movement in the northern regions of Ghana to increase the resilience of African food systems to the climate crisis. The long-term goal of the project is to create self-sufficient indigenous/heritage crop communities in Ghana and other parts of Africa that can adapt to climate change and ensure food security in the future. This approach will promote the development of sustainable and resilient food systems, address the lack of information on indigenous/heritage crops and ensure effective knowledge transfer, which is particularly important in the context of climate change.

The project is led by the Baltic International Centre for Economic Policy Studies (BICEPS), in collaboration with the Latvian Permaculture Association (LPA), which will ensure the transfer of Latvian knowledge on working with heritage crops and the development of a community-based experience and knowledge sharing platform. The Savannah Agricultural Research Institute will be involved in the development of training modules focusing on indigenous crops suitable for Ghana. Meanwhile, the Ghanaian social enterprise Farmerline will use its Mergdata technology platform and interactive voice response system to transfer this knowledge to local farmers. It will adapt educational content into four local languages and disseminate it through mobile technologies, reaching up to 10,000 farmers.

During the implementation of the project, field studies will also be carried out to document Latvia’s development cooperation practices and provide lessons that will be useful internationally. It is also planned to work on academic publications on Latvia’s experience in development cooperation. Mutual learning will be important here, as Latvian partners and society can learn and adopt Farmerline’s knowledge on how to reach broad target groups in rural areas using mobile technology solutions.

The project has received development cooperation financing from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia in 2024 and 2025.