UP advances sustainable farming through NATAE project promoting agroecological transitions in Africa
The University of Pretoria (UP) is playing a key role in the North African Transition to Agroecology (NATAE) project, which focuses on agroecological transitions on the continent, and in North Africa in particular.
NATAE aims to accelerate the adoption of science-based, locally tailored agroecological practices to enhance climate resilience, food security, and environmental sustainability in North Africa and includes farmers, consumers, businesses and policymakers. To further these aims, UP researchers are hosting a replication site in South Africa aimed at understanding the agroecological practices used locally.
The NATAE project is organised into six interlinked work packages that collectively support agroecological transitions in smallholder and dryland farming systems:
- Agroecological Innovation and Living Labs: Co-creation, adaptation and field validation of context-specific agroecological practices to enhance soil health, biodiversity and climate resilience.
- Digital and AI-enabled Advisory Systems: Development and validation of decision-support tools integrating climate, soil and pest data to strengthen smallholder decision-making.
- Socio-Economic and Value Chain Transformation: Promotion of inclusive market participation, improved livelihood viability and enhanced involvement of women and youth.
- Policy and Governance Alignment: Analysis and strengthening of enabling institutional, regulatory and policy frameworks to facilitate scaling.
- Capacity Building and Knowledge Exchange: Training, networking and Africa–Europe collaboration to accelerate learning and uptake.
- Monitoring, Evaluation and Impact Assessment: Establishment of indicators and evidence systems to assess environmental, economic and social performance.
Collectively, these work packages integrate practical innovation, digitalisation, market transformation, institutional alignment, and evidence generation to support scalable and sustainable agroecological transitions. Within this framework, the replication lab component focuses on territorial and landscape-level mapping, surveying existing agroecological practices, and assessing social, environmental, and market conditions to develop a comprehensive understanding of regional farming systems.
The project also emphasises structured knowledge exchange and policy engagement. Through cross-visits between living labs and replication sites, stakeholders share experiences, refine practices and contribute to policy-relevant insights that enable broader agroecological scaling.
The UP team is analysing agroecological practices under local conditions and conducting comparative assessments with similar agroecological contexts in partner countries, including Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and Mauritania. These cross-site comparisons support contextual learning and adaptation.
The UP team is led by Dr Danie Jordaan, Prof Quenton Kritzinger, Dr Diana Marais, Dr Christiaan Mostert and Ms Mariëtte de Villiers.