WOSCONET convened a two-day Climate-Smart Agriculture Training in September 2024, bringing together 95 women smallholder farmers from farming communities across three LGAs in Enugu State to build resilience against the increasingly severe disruptions that climate change is inflicting on agricultural livelihoods in Southeast Nigeria. The training, held at a community hall in Nkanu West LGA and facilitated by agronomists and extension workers with specialisation in climate-adaptive farming, marked WOSCONET's formal entry into the intersection of women's economic empowerment and climate action — an area the organisation identified as a critical priority following community consultations in which farming women consistently cited unpredictable rains, worsening soil erosion, and pest outbreaks as the primary threats to their food security and income.
The first day of training covered the science of climate change in plain, accessible language, helping participants understand why their farming experiences were changing and what to expect in the years ahead in terms of rainfall variability, temperature shifts, and flooding risk in the Enugu basin. Presenters deliberately rooted their explanations in the farmers' own observations — inviting participants to share what changes they had noticed over the past five to ten years in rain arrival timing, soil water retention, crop performance, and pest prevalence — and used this collective knowledge as the entry point into a discussion of climate science. This validation of farmers' indigenous knowledge as legitimate data proved to be among the most positively received elements of the training, with several participants noting that they had been observing and informally communicating these changes for years without ever being taken seriously by extension services.
"Women farmers are on the front lines of climate change. Equipping them with the right knowledge protects both their livelihoods and our food security."
The afternoon of Day 1 and the full Day 2 were devoted to practical climate-smart farming techniques. Sessions covered drought-tolerant crop varieties suited to Enugu's agro-ecological conditions, crop diversification strategies to reduce income risk from single-crop failures, conservation tillage and mulching methods to retain soil moisture and reduce erosion, integrated pest management approaches that reduce dependence on chemical inputs whose prices have become prohibitive, and the design and construction of simple water harvesting structures — including contour ridges, half-moon catchments, and small earthen storage ponds — that can capture rainwater during peak periods for use during dry spells. Participants also received practical instruction on composting using locally available organic materials, providing a low-cost soil fertility improvement method that reduces reliance on chemical fertilisers.
Each participant received a printed farmer's handbook in English and Igbo summarising the training content and providing step-by-step illustrated guides for each technique. WOSCONET also distributed starter seed packs of three drought-tolerant crop varieties — improved cassava, cowpea, and sorghum — to allow participants to test the new approaches in their own farms during the following growing season. Follow-up farm visits were planned for three months post-training, with WOSCONET's agricultural programme officer and a partner extension worker assigned to visit each participant community at least twice to observe implementation, troubleshoot challenges, and document results. Early reports from the farm visits conducted in November and December 2024 indicated that the majority of participants had implemented at least one technique, with particular uptake of the mulching and conservation tillage methods.
WOSCONET is now developing a proposal for a multi-year Women and Climate Resilience programme that would extend training to all 17 LGAs in Enugu State, integrate farmer field schools as a sustained learning model, and advocate at the state level for the inclusion of women farmers in Enugu's climate adaptation planning processes. The organisation is engaging the Enugu State Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources on the proposal and has connected with a coalition of Nigerian civil society organisations working on climate justice to amplify its voice in national climate policy spaces.