Mitigating the impacts of the 2021 drought on the agricultural livelihoods of smallholder farmers in southern Angola

FAO's objective is to mitigate the 2021 drought's impact on the agricultural livelihoods of small farmers in Cunene, Huila, and Huambo by ensuring climate-smart agriculture-related inputs, technologies, and knowledge. The latter will directly contribute to food security since it will mitigate harvest losses by facilitating access to basic ad-hoc irrigation technologies. It will also trigger production and productivity by securing adequate and diverse seeds, tools, and plows for animal traction. And finally, it will protect the household's assets, namely animals, which are at risk due to transhumance movements.

The concrete activities are organized around three outputs and refer to:

• facilitating access and management capacities of irrigation kits and pedal bike pumps to disseminate irrigated agriculture with existing water sources;
• distributing seeds according to local production culture, also allowing production diversification and increase of food supply both for beneficiaries' families and communities;
• engaging Field Farm Schools in advance development cycles as suppliers of inputs necessary in this context, concretely sweet potato and cassava seeds, to improve animal nutrition management by resorting to Field Farm Schools facilitators as Community-Based Animal Health Workers (CBAHW), with the abilities to provide technical assistance to surrounding farmers, and to reinforce the immunity of animals for agriculture work by providing veterinary kits specifically in Huambo, supported by adequate technical overseeing in coordination with the institute of veterinary services.