Today saw the innovative EBAFOSA (Ecosystem Based Adaptation for Food Security Assembly) framework launch in Sierra Leone with the aim of reshaping food security and climate resilience.
This is an important launch because we learnt from the launch event the shocking fact that Sierra Leone is the THIRD most vulnerable country in the world to dangerous climate change impacts, after Bangladesh and Guinee Bissau.
Mama Mayila took two girls from Moa Wharf slum, orphaned by the Ebola pandemic, who were lucky enough to be given permission from school to accompany Mama Mayila to the launch event, getting a positive life experience to take back to their friends.
Speaking at the launch Mama Mayila said: "We support EBAFOSA because, for us, we must do whatever we can to protect the children in our care from a future of hunger, poverty and the dangerous impacts of climate change"
We love it when children from one of the most deprived communities in Sierra Leone, children who have suffered immeasurably from the effects of Ebola, are able to mix with high-ranking VIPs because it shows them there are no limits to a girls' ambition.
Sierra Leone currently spends US $150 million on food imports and yet two-thirds of our land is uncultivated. EBAFOSA can reverse that trend by embracing an ecosystem-based adaptation approach to agriculture with an emphasis on traditional practices - conservation agriculture, crop rotation, inter-cropping and biological control of pests and encouraging insect pollinators – which has seen overall crop yields boosted by more than 125%!
