Water for agriculture in peri-urban delta areas is vital to safeguard sustainable food production. Due to dynamics of urbanisation in deltas and climate change, water availability (drought and flood) is becoming erratic and farmers cannot rely only on their own experience anymore to plan farming operations. This research aims to develop tailor made water information services with and for farmers in peri-urban areas in the urbanising deltas of Accra, Ghana and Khulna, Bangladesh to contribute to water and food security in river deltas. This will be done by 1) combining new developments in internet and mobile technology with latest insights on knowledge sharing; 2) integrating weather model results with observations of groundwater trends and river discharges; and 3) attuning knowledge about adaptive decision making and enabling governance structures to local situations. These insights will be used to co-create and test water information services, consisting of knowledge sharing platforms and virtual communities. Enabled by NWO seed money, the consortium has organised workshops with key actors (farmers, governance actors and ICT professionals) in both areas. These stakeholders have contributed to this proposal and are committed to engage in the proposed research and innovation process. The co-production of water information services with local farmers will contribute to: livelihood improvement, empower small/medium farmers and build capacity for enhancing sustainable food production. Furthermore it will result in a business case by delivering design principles for viable farmer-oriented water information services in other urban-rural delta zones in the developing world.

Ga West municipality faces compounding issues in soil productivity, land degradation, livelihood loss, food security and waste management. Using strategies that source existing and proven practices with scientific analysis and methods, the project?s innovation is drawn from a composition of creative instruments to address known problems. Training and enabling local government agricultural extension officers and five farmers? groups in composting and sustainable soil management will boost their capability to increase yield and tackle fertility issues. Building the infrastructure and organizational capacity of a youth-operated waste collection and compost production will contribute to youth economic development, the availability of accessible organic fertilizer, soil fertility of local community farms and municipal waste management. The consortium has strong and extensive ties with existing organizations and projects implementing similar, though separate and contextually distinct, strategies. It will source their experiences coupled with its own expertise to build a strong model for future expansion.