CoPs: Community of Practices for Climate Advisory Services in Livestock

Turning climate information into coordinated action for resilient livestock systems

The Community of Practice (CoP) is an innovative multi-stakeholder platform bringing together national and technical institutions that regularly interact to ensure coordinated governance of Climate Information Services for agro-pastoral systems. It provides a formal mechanism for consolidating expertise, sharing institutional priorities, and producing harmonized agro-climatic advisories for agro-pastoralists facing climate change. Through both digital and in-person collaboration, the CoP strengthens national coherence, improves policy-relevant climate decision-support, and supports resilient rural development.

This technology is pre-validated.

8•7

Scaling readiness: idea maturity 8/9; level of use 7/9

Positive impacts: 9

Target Groups	Positive impacts
Smallholder livestock keepers in remote areas with low literacy	Improved resilience through timely access to understandable climate and livestock advisories via radio and voice-based systems Strengthened household food security and income stability during climate shocks
Women livestock keepers in remote areas with low literacy	Enhanced inclusion in climate information systems through accessible, local-language advisory services Increased participation in livestock-related decision-making and economic activities Improved livelihoods through better protection and productivity of livestock assets
Transhumant pastoralists with low literacy	Reduced vulnerability to drought, heat stress, and resource scarcity during seasonal mobility Lower livestock mortality and improved livelihood resilience in climate-sensitive environments
Youth livestock entrepreneurs in underserved rural areas	Improved efficiency and profitability of livestock production through better planning and risk management Increased opportunities for innovation, entrepreneurship, and integration into value chains

More...

Unintended impacts: 6
Mitigations: 6

Barriers: 12
Mitigations: 12

Climate adaptability: Highly adaptable

The CoP improves climate adaptability by providing timely, localized, and actionable agro-pastoral advisories that help livestock keepers adjust feeding, mobility, breeding, and water management strategies in response to climate variability and extreme events.

Farmer climate change readiness: Significant improvement

It improves access to early warning information and continuous 10-day advisories, enabling farmers and pastoralists to anticipate risks such as drought, heat stress, and pasture scarcity.

Problem

Fragmented governance of Climate Information Services results in inconsistent and sometimes conflicting climate advisories because institutions operate without a coordinated national framework.
Limited and inequitable access to climate services leaves many livestock producers underserved due to the historical focus on crop production, seasonal delivery of advisories, and barriers such as low literacy, language, and limited connectivity.
Weak climate risk management reduces the ability of producers to anticipate and respond to climate hazards, leading to livestock losses, lower productivity, and increased pressure on food security.
Limited integration of climate data for decision-making constrains evidence-based planning because weather observations, forecasts, and climate intelligence remain fragmented across institutions.

Solution

The CoP establishes a unified national climate advisory system (“single source of truth”) that reduces fragmented and conflicting messages across institutions.
It delivers evidence-based, 10-day agro-climatic advisories that strengthen national planning and climate risk decision-making.
It improves livestock sector performance by supporting better timing of vaccination, breeding, and fodder management through actionable guidance.
It ensures year-round climate services, including during the dry season when pastoralists face the highest risks.
It strengthens inclusive access to public climate services by using radio, IVR, SMS, and local languages to reach remote and low-literacy communities.

Key points to design your project

The Community of Practice (CoP) is a structured multi-stakeholder learning and coordination platform that brings together institutions, experts, and practitioners to co-produce, validate, and deliver actionable climate services for agro-pastoral systems. To effectively integrate a Community of Practice (CoP) into a climate services project, governments and partners need to:

Formally establish the CoP through a multi-stakeholder consultative process, ensuring representation from public institutions, NGOs, private digital actors, and producer organizations, with roles and data-sharing rules defined through a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).
Conduct a user-centered needs assessment with agro-pastoralists, integrating local knowledge, gender considerations, and vulnerability factors to ensure demand-driven advisory services.
Organize the CoP as a regular interactive knowledge-sharing space (e.g. monthly meetings) where scientists and practitioners jointly co-produce and validate agro-climatic advisories before dissemination.
Deploy a multi-channel dissemination strategy combining rural radio, SMS, IVR, and USSD tools to ensure last-mile delivery while maintaining a single coordinated source of truth.
Establish a continuous monitoring and learning system using qualitative and quantitative feedback to improve advisory relevance, performance, and impact over time.
Collaborate with technical resource persons (e.g. ILRI) to support facilitation, design of coordination processes, and documentation of results for learning and scale-up.

IP

No formal IP rights

Scaling Readiness describes how complete a technology\’s development is and its ability to be scaled. It produces a score that measures a technology\’s readiness along two axes: the level of maturity of the idea itself, and the level to which the technology has been used so far.

Each axis goes from 0 to 9 where 9 is the “ready-to-scale” status. For each technology profile in the e-catalogs we have documented the scaling readiness status from evidence given by the technology providers. The e-catalogs only showcase technologies for which the scaling readiness score is at least 8 for maturity of the idea and 7 for the level of use.

The graph below represents visually the scaling readiness status for this technology, you can see the label of each level by hovering your mouse cursor on the number.

Scaling readiness score of this technology

Maturity of the idea 8 out of 9

Uncontrolled environment: tested

Level of use 8 out of 9

Common use by projects NOT connected to technology provider

Maturity of the idea										Level of use
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9

Positive impact 9

Target Groups	Positive impacts
Smallholder livestock keepers in remote areas with low literacy	Improved resilience through timely access to understandable climate and livestock advisories via radio and voice-based systems Strengthened household food security and income stability during climate shocks
Women livestock keepers in remote areas with low literacy	Enhanced inclusion in climate information systems through accessible, local-language advisory services Increased participation in livestock-related decision-making and economic activities Improved livelihoods through better protection and productivity of livestock assets
Transhumant pastoralists with low literacy	Reduced vulnerability to drought, heat stress, and resource scarcity during seasonal mobility Lower livestock mortality and improved livelihood resilience in climate-sensitive environments
Youth livestock entrepreneurs in underserved rural areas	Improved efficiency and profitability of livestock production through better planning and risk management Increased opportunities for innovation, entrepreneurship, and integration into value chains

Unintended impact 6

Target Groups	Unintended impacts	Mitigation measures
Women livestock keepers in remote areas with low literacy	Risk of exclusion within households if men control access to phones or radio devices Limited ability to act on advisories despite receiving them	Promote women-targeted communication channels and listening groups Integrate gender-sensitive facilitation through community leaders and extension agents to ensure equitable access and decision-making
Transhumant pastoralists with low literacy	Over-reliance on advisories could reduce traditional mobility strategies and local ecological knowledge Misalignment between advisory timing and real-time local conditions along migration routes	Combine scientific advisories with local knowledge validation within the CoP Provide flexible, regularly updated 10-day advisories adapted to mobility dynamics and field feedback
Youth livestock entrepreneurs in underserved rural areas	Unequal access to digital tools may widen gaps between connected and unconnected youth Over-dependence on digital advice may reduce independent risk assessment skills	Ensure multi-channel access (not only digital) including SMS, IVR, and radio Provide capacity-building on interpretation and use of climate information for business decisions
Smallholder livestock keepers in remote areas with low literacy	-	-

Barriers 12

Target Groups	Adoption barriers	Mitigation measures
Smallholder livestock keepers in remote areas with low literacy	Difficulty understanding technical climate and livestock information Limited access to mobile phones or stable communication channels Low trust in external advisory systems compared to traditional practices	Deliver advisories through radio, IVR, and community relay agents in local languages Strengthen demonstration and farmer-to-farmer learning approaches to build trust Simplify messages into clear, action-oriented guidance validated by the CoP
Women livestock keepers in remote areas with low literacy	Limited access to communication devices controlled within households Time constraints due to domestic workload Lower participation in extension and community information channels	Establish women-focused listening groups and targeted radio programming Design flexible delivery channels (IVR, voice messages) accessible outside household control Engage female extension agents and community facilitators to improve inclusion
Transhumant pastoralists with low literacy	Mobility across regions limits continuous access to advisory services Weak network coverage along migration routes Reliance on traditional knowledge systems over external forecasts	Provide mobile-friendly, low-bandwidth services (SMS/IVR) and pre-migration advisories Strengthen regional coordination of information dissemination along transhumance corridors Integrate local knowledge with CoP-validated advisories to improve credibility
Youth livestock entrepreneurs in underserved rural areas	Limited financial resources to access digital tools and inputs Low technical capacity to interpret climate data for business decisions Weak linkage to formal advisory and market systems	Support digital literacy and climate-smart business training programs Facilitate access to low-cost or shared digital advisory platforms (SMS/USSD/IVR) Strengthen linkages with value chain actors, finance institutions, and CoP partners

Countries with a green colour: Tested & adopted
Countries with a bright green colour: Adopted
Countries with a yellow colour: Tested
Countries with a blue colour: Testing ongoing

Countries where the technology is being tested or has been tested and adopted
Country	Testing ongoing	Tested	Adopted
Senegal	–No ongoing testing	–Not tested	Adopted

This technology can be used in the colored agro-ecological zones. Any zones shown in white are not suitable for this technology.

Agro-ecological zones where this technology can be used
AEZ	Subtropic - warm	Subtropic - cool	Tropic - warm	Tropic - cool
Arid
Semiarid
Subhumid
Humid

Source: HarvestChoice/IFPRI 2009

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals that are applicable to this technology.

Goal 10: reduced inequalities

It contributes to reducing inequalities in accessing climate knowledge

Goal 13: climate action

It improves climate adaptability by providing timely, localized agro-pastoral advisories that enable livestock keepers to adjust practices (mobility, feeding, breeding, water use) in response to climate variability and extreme events.

Putting in place a Community of Practice (CoP) for climate services is a multi-step collaborative process that integrates scientific expertise with local knowledge. Based on the successful model established in Senegal, the implementation follows these key phases:

1. Initial Consultation and Stakeholder Identification

The process begins by identifying a systemic need, often through national consultations or sectoral policy priorities.

Convene a Consultative Workshop: Bring together a wide range of experts and stakeholders to propose and unanimously accept the creation of the CoP network.
Diverse Actor Mapping: Ensure representation from three main pillars:
- Public Institutions: National agencies for meteorology (ANACIM), agricultural research (ISRA), and livestock direction (DIREL).
- Private Sector & NGOs: Digital startups (Jokalante, Mlouma) and international NGOs (AVSF, Action Against Hunger).
- Producer Organizations: Local livestock and dairy associations (ADID, APAFIL) to ensure user needs are central.

2. Formalization and Structuring

To ensure a coherent and formal system, the CoP must establish clear rules of engagement.

Develop a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU): Formalize roles, responsibilities, and data-sharing policies.
Define Roles: For example, assign a digital partner (like Jokalante) to facilitate internal communication between experts and manage the dissemination platform.
Create an Inclusive Space: Establish regular (typically monthly) meetings where scientists, development experts, and local stakeholders can share experience-based knowledge.

3. The Co-Production Workflow

The core of the CoP is the co-generation of advice, which follows a specific cycle:

Needs Assessment: Evaluate the specific information requirements of the target audience, such as animal health, pasture availability, or water access.
Data Integration: Combine scientific climate forecasts (daily, decadal, seasonal) with local perceptions and community knowledge.
Harmonization & Translation: Translate complex technical data into actionable agro-climatic advice in local languages (e.g., Pular) that farmers can easily understand.
Validation: Jointly review and approve content before dissemination to provide a single source of truth and avoid conflicting messages.

4. Multi-Channel Dissemination

The CoP must select reliable channels to bridge the "last mile" to remote communities:

Leverage Digital Tech: Use Interactive Voice Response (IVR), SMS, and USSD codes to reach farmers regardless of their literacy level or internet access.
Utilize Rural Radio: Partner with community radio unions to broadcast advisories broadly.
Ensure Year-Round Delivery: Unlike traditional seasonal crop advice, livestock CoPs must operate through both the rainy and dry seasons to support continuous decision-making.

5. Monitoring, Feedback, and Scaling: To ensure sustainability and relevance,

Establish Feedback Mechanisms: Conduct post-season perception surveys to collect data on how beneficiaries understood and used the advice.
Perform Regular Evaluations: Use qualitative and quantitative data to identify areas for improvement and document best practices.
Institutionalize the Model: Gradually integrate the CoP into national institutional frameworks (such as the Ministry of Livestock) to ensure it becomes part of public policy.