The overall objective will be to strengthen the capacity of individuals, organizations and systems within the agricultural innovation systems in less favoured areas (semi-arid Central Zone Tanzania and Chikwawa/ Karonga, Malawi) and more favoured areas (Southern Highlands, Tanzania and Mulanje/ Mzimba Malawi) of Tanzania and Malawi to adapt to the challenges and opportunities arising from CC & V. With accelerating CC&V the agricultural innovation system needs to be stronger in order to service the different and changing needs of the various stakeholders.

The individuals and organizations within the agricultural innovation systems,include farmers disaggregated by gender, age, resource access, vulnerability; district councils; agricultural extension service providers, stockists; private sector companies; NGO staff; trainers; researchers; media; policy influencers and decision makers. Specifically, this action research project aims to:

1. Strengthen farmers’ capacity to access and use quality information, training and products in order to adapt to climate change and climate variability

2. Strengthen the capacity of private and public sector stakeholders to make agricultural innovation systems work more efficiently, equitably and responsively to climate change and climate variability

3. Learn and share lessons for scaling up successful strategies for capacity strengthening (individuals, organizations and systems) within agricultural innovations systems to adapt to climate change and climate variability

The involvement of the different actors in this action research process will enhance their understanding of the resilience of each of their livelihoods in adapting to changing climatic conditions and their different knowledge sets. Their involvement will create opportunities for combined learning about and testing of adaptive strategies that could be implemented in the shorter and longer term enabling local, regional and national policy processes to be informed by practical, internally generated knowledge.