Paper short abstract:

As climate change affects food security in Mozambique efforts are made to support agroecological food production. This paper explores the knowledges, their origin and valorization, that are used to inform these efforts.

Paper long abstract:

Climate change causes extreme weather conditions in Mozambique. These are drastic to food production that is mainly in the hands of female smallholder farmers. To combat the situation various international and local organizations support agroecological food production, women’s access to land and their inclusion in decision making through the channels of international development co-operation.

However, through these channels the logics, ideals, norms, and practices of the organizational field of development cooperation enter the local context and influence, for example, the kinds of knowledge that are valued and generated. There is the pressure to produce monitoring information for accountability purposes and to showcase impact stories. But what are the information needs of the local producers and do they get satisfied?

This paper proposes a research project that asks what kind of knowledge and whose knowledge counts in the interface of development cooperation and the local Mozambican context? What makes knowledge relevant and for whom? How are different kinds of knowledges used and for what purpose?

The data for this study will be collected as part of a transdisciplinary, participatory process with a Finnish environmental NGO and its local partners in Mozambique that tests an idea of transforming monitoring and evaluation into a continuous learning process that engages with multiple knowledges with a futures orientation.