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Briefing note on the Africa Climate Change Resilience Alliance (ACCRA)

Summary

The Africa Climate Change Resilience Alliance (ACCRA) worked from November 2009 to December 2016 — seven years — to influence climate resilience policy and practice in Uganda, Mozambique and Ethiopia [source: oxfam]. The alliance used a multistakeholder process built on research, knowledge and learning; trusting relationships between government, civil society and communities; context-specific capacity development; and alliance building and networking [source: oxfam]. It also published “stories of change” showing how it made gender-responsive climate resilience a reality in the three countries [source: oxfam].

Tactics used

  • coalition building
  • multistakeholder-dialogue
  • research
  • capacity-development
  • gender-mainstreaming

Background

ACCRA was formed in November 2009 by five development organisations — Oxfam, CARE International, the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), Save the Children and World Vision — to address gaps in climate adaptation governance in three African countries facing very different climate stresses: drought-prone Ethiopia, flood- and cyclone-prone Mozambique, and Uganda, where livelihood disruption comes from mixed seasonal shifts [source: oxfam]. The alliance framed its work around governance of adaptation and planning processes, arguing that technical adaptation interventions fail when they are not locally owned and gender-responsive [source: oxfam].

What happened

ACCRA worked over seven years, from November 2009 to December 2016, to influence climate resilience policy and practice in Uganda, Mozambique and Ethiopia [source: oxfam]. The alliance built on research, knowledge and learning; developed trusting relationships between government, civil society and communities; provided context-specific capacity development; and engaged in alliance building and networking [source: oxfam]. ACCRA also brought out “stories of change” showing how it made gender-responsive climate resilience a reality in the three countries, offering tested models that national adaptation policymakers could adapt [source: oxfam]. The briefing note was published in 2017 to summarise the alliance’s contribution to date.

Key people & organizations

  • Africa Climate Change Resilience Alliance (ACCRA) [source: oxfam]
  • Oxfam [source: oxfam]
  • CARE International [source: oxfam]
  • IIED — International Institute for Environment and Development [source: oxfam]
  • ODI — Overseas Development Institute [source: oxfam]
  • Save the Children [source: oxfam]
  • World Vision [source: oxfam]
  • Margaret Barihaihi — ACCRA coordinator [source: oxfam]
  • Helen Jeans — ACCRA programme staff [source: oxfam]
  • National and local government counterparts in Uganda, Mozambique and Ethiopia [source: oxfam]

Outcome

Verdict: partial.

The briefing note frames ACCRA’s contribution as having enhanced the governance of adaptation and planning processes through a multistakeholder approach and as having delivered gender-responsive “stories of change” in Uganda, Mozambique and Ethiopia [source: oxfam]. As an alliance brief rather than an end-of-project evaluation, it does not specify discrete campaign wins; readers should treat the outcome as a documented influence on policy discourse and capacity rather than a measurable reversal [source: oxfam].

Lessons

  • A long-running alliance (seven years) of development NGOs with complementary mandates can build the kind of trust with governments and communities that no single member could establish alone.
  • Multistakeholder governance of adaptation — government, civil society and communities at the table together — is a prerequisite for locally owned, gender-responsive policy.
  • “Stories of change” framed around concrete country pilots (Uganda, Mozambique, Ethiopia) make abstract adaptation policy legible to funders and frontline practitioners.
  • Capacity development is most durable when it is context-specific and embedded in existing planning cycles rather than delivered as one-off training events.
  • Gender-responsive climate resilience is not a parallel concern; the ACCRA experience is that gender and governance are the two pillars that determine whether technical adaptation investments survive at scale.

Sources

Disclaimer: Included as a teaching example of campaign craft, not as endorsement.

Sources & verification

  • oxfam — grounding: primary — license: link-only
  • Held note: This is an alliance briefing note, not a single named campaign event. Useful as a case study of how a multi-NGO climate alliance built policy influence and gender-responsive adaptation practice across three African countries; not appropriate for promotion to established as a campaign event.
  • Rewritten: 2026-06-25 via worker_casestudies_v2.py; deepened 2026-07-10 against RAW/briefing-note-on-the-africa-climate-change-resilience-alliance.md.

Last verified: 2026-07-09