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This policy brief examines how the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) can be leveraged to improve food security and food sovereignty across Africa. It identifies significant barriers to intra-African food trade, including high tariffs on sensitive food items, restrictive sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) standards for small enterprises, and a lack of coordinated strategic food reserves. The document recommends accelerating tariff removal, differentiating compliance requirements by enterprise size, and protecting indigenous genetic resources through intellectual property rights to build a more resilient and self-sufficient agricultural system.

This policy brief argues that South Africa should leverage international interest in green hydrogen to catalyze local socio-economic development and regional integration. It recommends prioritizing trade-focused investments in physical, institutional, and social enablers—specifically port infrastructure, domestic manufacturing of electrolysers, and community-centric social strategies—to ensure the sector benefits the domestic population rather than serving only as an export mechanism.

The Global Resilience Partnership (GRP) 2024 End of Year Letter outlines the organization's strategic direction for 2024-2029, highlighting its focus on locally-led innovation, private sector engagement through the PREPARE initiative, and the launch of data-democratization tools via the Resilient Planet Initiative.

This report by the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) provides a guide for developing financial instruments for climate adaptation, drawing on a decade of experience from the Global Innovation Lab for Climate Finance (The Lab). It identifies key barriers to adaptation finance—such as high perceived risk, limited investor awareness, and a lack of bankable pipelines—and outlines a five-step framework for structuring successful instruments: defining a resilience thesis, building robust pipelines, strategic funder engagement, cultivating collaborations, and measuring impact.

This policy brief argues for the adoption of progressive tax instruments—including Financial Transaction Taxes (FTT), net wealth taxes, property taxes, and Resource Rent Taxes—to combat extreme poverty and economic inequality, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. It highlights the regressive nature of current African tax structures and provides a case study for South Africa, suggesting that a combination of these taxes could generate hundreds of billions of rands to fund social protection and basic income guarantees.

This research paper presents insights from the Future Resilience for African CiTies And Lands (FRACTAL) project regarding the co-production of climate services in urban sub-Saharan Africa and other low-income settings, advocating for a shift from product-focused outputs to transdisciplinary knowledge co-production processes centered on collaborative learning.

The Centre for Environmental Rights (CER), on behalf of the Life After Coal (LAC) coalition, submitted comments on the Gas Amendment Bill [B – 2023], arguing that accelerating gas infrastructure is irrational given the climate emergency and South Africa's extreme vulnerability to climate change. The submission criticizes the Bill for inadequate public consultation processes, lack of transparency regarding confidential information, and a failure to align with international climate targets such as the IPCC's 1.5°C benchmark.

The Southern African Resilience Academy (SARA), coordinated by the Centre for Sustainability Transitions at Stellenbosch University and the Global Resilience Partnership, is issuing a call for applications for transdisciplinary working groups for the 2025-2027 period. Under the theme "Transformative Pathways to Resilient and Sustainable Futures," these groups will conduct synthesis projects to influence policy and practice regarding resilience and development in the southern African region.

This policy brief by the Southern African Resilience Academy (SARA) advocates for the integration of Gender Transformative Approaches (GTAs) into policies and programs across Southern Africa to build equitable and resilient livelihoods. It argues that traditional gender mainstreaming fails to address the root causes of inequality, such as entrenched social norms, and proposes a shift toward GTAs that challenge and change these structures to enhance community and ecosystem resilience against climate change and food insecurity.

This report by the South African Institute of International Affairs examines the intersection of global renewable energy goals and South Africa's socio-economic challenges, arguing that a 'Just Energy Transition' requires radical socio-economic transformation, energy democracy, and decentralized governance.

This insights brief by the Southern African Resilience Academy (SARA) examines the role of urban informality in building equitable resilience in cities across southern Africa and the Global South. It argues that while informality is often invisible or viewed as a challenge, it provides critical services, livelihoods, and innovation that can enhance urban resilience if harnessed through inclusive governance and partnerships.

This briefing describes the integration of the Photovoice methodology into a post-graduate psychology programme at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa. The project aimed to enable students to document and investigate community resilience from their own perspectives, contributing to a broader effort by the Southern African Resilience Academy (SARA) to conceptualize 'equitable resilience' within the Global South.

This research paper identifies three priority policy measures to transform food systems and improve nutritional outcomes while adapting to climate change, based on reviews of several countries in Eastern and Southern Africa.

This report examines the integration of voluntary sustainability standards (VSSs) into trade policies between developing countries (South-South trade) to enhance the trade of sustainable products and improve market access for small-scale producers and small and medium-sized enterprises.

This policy brief examines the vulnerability of Africa to transboundary and cascading climate risks, where climate impacts in one country affect others through trade, finance, migration, and shared ecosystems. It discusses the role of National Adaptation Plans (NAPs) in managing these risks and provides recommendations for the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) to seek support via UNFCCC processes.

This policy brief from the Southern African Resilience Academy (SARA) examines the interconnected policies shaping urban food systems in Southern Africa. It argues that resilient and equitable food systems—those capable of withstanding shocks while ensuring fair access to nutritious food—require an integrated approach to urban planning that incorporates food considerations, supports informal food actors, and ensures inclusive stakeholder representation.

The Global Resilience Partnership (GRP) 2022 end-of-year letter outlines the organization's efforts to catalyze resilience investments and initiatives, highlighting partnerships with the private sector, the launch of innovation challenges in East Africa, and the operation of the COP Resilience Hub.

The Centre for Environmental Rights (CER) submitted comments on the draft National Water Resources Strategy 3 (NWRS-3) on 28 October 2022. The submission argues that the strategy must move beyond treating climate change as a future uncertainty and instead implement binding regulations to protect water security. The CER emphasizes the need for legal protection of Strategic Water Source Areas (SWSAs), strengthened compliance monitoring and enforcement (CME), increased transparency in water resource information, and a precautionary approach to unconventional oil and gas exploration due to risks of water contamination and greenhouse gas emissions.

Natural Justice and the Biodiversity Law Centre provide a commentary on the Draft White Paper on Conservation and Sustainable Use of South Africa’s Biodiversity 2022, expressing strong support for its shift toward a 'Living in Harmony with Nature' paradigm and its recognition of the colonial and apartheid legacies within the conservation sector.

This report by the Global Resilience Partnership (GRP) provides an overview of the food systems context in southern Africa, focusing on the pivotal events of 2021. It details the drivers necessitating food systems transformation—such as climate change, urbanisation, and malnutrition—and summarizes the outcomes of major international summits (UNFSS, AGRF, COP26) and regional initiatives led by the Southern African Resilience Academy (SARA) to build climate-resilient and sustainable food systems.