African agriculture faces a triple challenge: producing enough to feed a growing population with increasing consumption of animal-based products, while reducing the use of synthetic inputs (chemical fertilizers, pesticides, etc.) and preserving natural ecosystems.

In this context, agroecology—which relies on natural processes rather than industrial inputs to maintain soil fertility—emerges as an alternative to conventional agriculture. The latter, which drove increases in agricultural yields during the “Green Revolution” of the 20th century, is now widely considered unsustainable due to its impacts on ecosystems and public health.

However, to fertilize soils, the ecological transition requires sourcing nitrogen, a key nutrient for crops, beyond cultivated land. In agroecology, nitrogen comes from natural sources such as legume crops, animal manure, and compost, which themselves require space. As a result, this can have significant implications for land use: meeting agricultural needs while adhering to agroecological principles may lead to an expansion of agricultural and grazing land, encroaching on natural areas (particularly forests, grasslands, and savannas). Issues of soil fertility and land use are therefore closely intertwined with those of biodiversity conservation.

The TAASF2050 research project aims to assess the relevance and feasibility of an agroecological agricultural model in Africa: can agroecological scenarios meet food demand? Do they make African countries more or less dependent on imports? What scope do they offer for reducing the use of synthetic fertilizers while preserving natural ecosystems?

By taking into account various factors (changes in dietary patterns, agricultural yields, and nitrogen fertilizer use), the project seeks to evaluate the implications of an agroecological transition for food sovereignty in African countries and for the preservation of natural ecosystems. More specifically, it aims to determine how far such a model can be scaled without exceeding the limits of land and ecosystems, while improving Africa’s food self-sufficiency. To this end, the project models land use and nitrogen fertilization in Africa up to 2050.

The findings will be valuable for AFD, for which agriculture and biodiversity are key priority sectors. They will also contribute to discussions with African governments on the opportunities and constraints associated with an agroecological transition in their respective national contexts.

The project relies on the GLOBAGRI simulation model developed by CIRAD. Changes in population dietary patterns, agricultural yields, and nitrogen fertilizer use are the model’s main input variables. The preservation of natural capital is treated as a fundamental constraint (the protection of tree-covered areas, the elimination of inputs derived from fossil resources and agricultural pollution, and the maintenance of soil fertility), within a strong sustainability framework.

The project led to the development of GlobAgri Africa 2050, an open-access interactive modelling tool that allows users to explore, country by country, four agricultural scenarios for Africa by 2050. It enables users to test different assumptions regarding dietary patterns and environmental constraints for each of the 45 African countries.

Initial simulations confirm the strong tension between, on the one hand, maintaining agricultural land within limits compatible with the preservation of forest cover and natural grasslands and savannas areas, and, on the other hand, limiting import dependence to a reasonable level for all African countries.

The current results, which correspond to scenarios for changes in dietary patterns (towards protein-richer diets, or toward healthier diets, or those that limit the expansion of agricultural land), can be further enriched with scenarios that AFD's partners may wish to test.

Finally, a more detailed analysis of the availability of organic fertilizing resources is expected, within the next year, to provide an assessment of the risks, at both local and national levels, of failing to ensure sufficient agricultural production to guarantee food security for populations.

• Benoit Faivre-Dupaigre ; Researcher at AFD
• Patrice Dumas ; Researcher at CIRAD, UMR CIRED 
• Rémi Prudhomme ; Researcher at CIRAD, UMR CIRED 
• David Berre ; Researcher at CIRAD, UMR AIDA

Ten years after the signing of the Paris Agreement, and five years into the Kunming-Montreal Agreement, he global economy is entering a period of profound structural change, often called “mid-transition”. Climate change, biodiversity loss, energy system transitions and shifting geopolitical dynamics are increasingly shaping economic development, financial stability and public finances. Climate shocks are already affecting fiscal balances and investment needs, while ecosystem degradation threatens key economic sectors such as agriculture, water and natural resources. At the same time, the transition toward low-carbon economies is transforming supply chains, trade relations and industrial strategies.

For Ministries of Finance, these dynamics are emerging as core macroeconomic risks while fostering new opportunities. Yet existing policy frameworks often struggle to integrate climate and nature fat-tailed risks (explication ou lien) into a systemic framework. Developing forward-looking economic scenarios that capture these interactions is therefore essential to support resilient fiscal planning and long-term development strategies.

It is in this context that AFD has launched the Climate and Nature Economic Policy Scenarios (CNEPS) initiative, a multilateral platform for the development of forward-looking economic scenarios to help policymakers anticipate these transformations and inform economic policy choices. It joins forces with an ecosystem of institutional, regional and academic partners to foster a shared language on plausible futures and related resilient economic policies.

The Climate and Nature Economic Policy Scenarios (CNEPS) initiative aims to develop forward-looking economic scenarios that help integrate climate change, biodiversity loss and transition dynamics into macroeconomic policy analysis. The project focuses on three main objectives:

• Technical integration: integrate climate and nature fat-tailed risks within macroeconomic policy frameworks, exploring nonlinear shocks, tipping points and geopolitical regime shifts, while building on existing structured country collaborations of AFD as well as regional and institutional partners.
• Policy interface: translate joint global scenarios into implications for fiscal policy, debt sustainability, industrial strategies and investment planning, while supporting champion countries in developing resilient national financing strategies.
• Coalition building: mobilise Ministries of Finance, Public Development Banks and academic partners, and connect existing finance-minister and public development banking platforms to scale impact and strengthen policy dialogue.

The approach brings together global analytical work and country-level collaboration to explore how climate and nature risks, transition dynamics and geopolitical shifts could affect national economies and public finances.

The initiative builds on partnerships between research institutions, development finance actors and Ministries of Finance in participating countries. Academic partners contribute modelling expertise and scenario design, while Ministries of Finance and Public Development Banks provide policy perspectives and help identify the most relevant economic questions and applications.

The project mobilises an international knowledge network and works with partner countries to ensure that the scenarios developed respond to concrete policy needs and strengthen local analytical capacity.

For this project, AFD is partnering with the University of Exeter.

The CNEPS initiative will deliver a first generation of forward-looking economic scenarios exploring how climate change, biodiversity loss and global transition dynamics could affect national economies and public finances.

Key outputs will include a first mid-transition analytical report presenting emerging global trends and systemic risks, as well as a first set of global scenarios developed with champion countries and regional partners. These scenarios will be translated into country-level assessments exploring implications for resilient fiscal policy, debt sustainability and investment strategies.

The project will also support participating countries in developing a first series of national CNEPS strategies aimed at informing resilient financing pathways and long-term economic planning.

Beyond analytical outputs, the initiative will contribute to policy dialogue and capacity strengthening through workshops, regional exchanges and engagement with international platforms bringing together Ministries of Finance and Public Development Banks.

• Etienne Espagne, Senior Economist, AFD
• Jean-François Mercure, Professor of Climate Policy, Exeter University
• Sam Mugume Koojo, Deputy Co-Chair CFMCA, Country Platform Hub, PAFCA
• Laura Sabogal Reyes, FiCS

Public decision-makers are increasingly encouraged to rely on research-based evidence to design effective policies. However, in practice, scientific findings struggle to circulate beyond the academic world: they often arrive too late, are written in language that is not easily accessible outside academic circles, or are poorly suited to the concrete challenges faced by public actors.

At the same time, projects that foster dialogue between researchers and policymakers are complex to implement and evaluate: they must constantly adapt to shifting political contexts and produce diffuse or indirect effects that are not easily measured. Traditional monitoring and evaluation tools, centred on quantitative indicators, rigid frameworks and logical matrices, fail to capture these dynamics effectively. They are primarily used for accountability to donors, rather than for collective learning or project adaptation.

AFD supports numerous research projects aimed at informing public action. Observing this gap between researchers and policymakers, it sought to develop a monitoring and evaluation method that is more useful, more flexible, and better suited to these projects, in order to improve the measurement of their real impact and strengthen the influence of research on public policy.

The project consisted of designing a monitoring and evaluation method specifically tailored to initiatives that connect research and public action. It addresses a twofold challenge: tracking the real effects of these projects over time, and helping stakeholders in managing them more effectively in uncertain and shifting contexts.

Rather than limiting itself to a purely accounting-based quantification of activities or formal outputs (number of reports, workshops or publications), the method focuses above all on the changes the project has helped set in motion: have trust-based relationships been built? Are the knowledge outputs being mobilised? Are practices and modes of collaboration evolving? Underlying this is a threefold objective: to better understand what truly works by identifying relevant signals of change; to produce useful information for adjusting strategies during project implementation (identifying obstacles, reinforcing effective actions); and to improve the formulation of public policy recommendations.

This approach contributes to enhancing the quality of public decisions by promoting a more concrete, more practical, consistent, and targeted use of scientific knowledge.

The project resulted in a research paper, a technical report, and a monitoring and evaluation toolkit designed for development practitioners.

This method was tested on real-world research projects and co-developed with the various types of stakeholders involved, in order to capture their respective needs and constraints: researchers and public institutions, but also local organisations, civil society actors, and donors.

The approach is intentionally light and adaptable, allowing it to fit the time and resource constraints of partners, particularly in countries of the Global South. Local stakeholders are fully involved in data collection, interpretation, and the adjustment of actions. In practice, the method combines collective workshops, simple data collection tools (interviews, testimonials, observations), and moments of shared analysis. It draws in particular on the "theory of change", a tool that enables a team to clarify the expected outcomes of a project, the intermediate steps required, and the conditions for success.

The monitoring and evaluation method was tested across around ten projects in North Africa, Madagascar and the Sahel region, before being deployed across other geographies. It led to the following results:

• Exchanges between researchers, policymakers and local partners enabled the dissemination of findings and the sharing of lessons learned.
• Institutional and academic partners strengthened their capacities in monitoring and evaluation, policy dialogue facilitation, and project impact analysis.
• In several cases, the approach helped adjust strategies during implementation and improve the formulation of recommendations for policymakers. In doing so, it contributed to a more structured, better informed and more sustainable dialogue between research and public action.

This approach advances thinking on the use of research in public action by demonstrating that effective monitoring and evaluation can serve as a strategic management tool, rather than merely a control mechanism. It highlights the need to strengthen local capacities in monitoring and evaluation, as well as skills in facilitating dialogue between science and public decision-making.

However, some questions remain regarding the sustainability of the observed effects and the ability to scale up the approach. Further experimentation is underway to consolidate the methodology and adapt it to other contexts. The toolkit will also soon be deployed in the context of macroeconomic modelling projects, illustrating the approach’s strong thematic adaptability—one of its key added values.

• Stéphanie Leyronas
• Camille Tchounikine
• Annabelle Moreau Santos
• Sophie Salomon