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Catalysing regional programmes

LONG-TERM TRAINING, INFORMATION EXCHANGE AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ARE BEST EXECUTED THROUGH REGIONAL AND SUBREGIONAL PROGRAMMES

Regional and subregional programmes provide African countries with a chance to benefit from the experience of other countries in land conservation. Fortunately, several well-established regional organizations already exist, such as CILSS, SADCC and AFRENA, and FAO plans to work with them in developing regional conservation and rehabilitation programmes. Two areas in which such programmes are particularly needed are training and research.

Training for conservation

There is a pressing need for several types of conservation training that are beyond the resources of most African countries. For example, long-term training of technical staff at advanced levels and short-term training of middle to senior level staff in specific subjects are difficult to obtain in most African countries.

To date, Africans requiring advanced training in conservation have been sent overseas, usually to Europe or North America. However, overseas training is expensive and far fewer people can be trained in this way than are required to meet the needs of the continent. Furthermore, many Africans have found their overseas training to have little relevance to the problems and environments of their own countries.

In 1987 the Department of Agricultural Engineering at the University of Nairobi introduced a two-year MSc course in soil and water conservation with the assistance of the Swedish and Dutch governments. If this course can be expanded, it could cater for the requirements of a number of the English-speaking countries of Africa. However, overall requirements for training at this level need to be assessed and, if necessary, the possibility of developing similar courses at other universities explored. There is currently no comparable training in French-speaking Africa, even though such a course is badly needed.

Regional and subregional training facilities for short courses and middle-level training are also needed. The SADCC programme caters for some of this need and there is a short course in Malawi run by the Ministry of Agriculture's Land Husbandry Branch. In addition, organizations such as FAO and USAID have helped run ad hoc training courses in several areas. FAO has also supported an arid-zone network in the CILSS countries that has organized training in sand dune stabilization and dry land afforestation.

These efforts have been useful but have provided only a fraction of the training needed. Initially, at least, two centres are required - one for French speakers and one for English speakers - which could provide regular short to medium term training in different aspects of conservation.

Research on land degradation

There has been little recent research on African land degradation and conservation practices. As a result, most of the conservation practices and techniques now being advocated have been developed in other parts of the world.

Some of these techniques have been cleverly adapted to local conditions. For example, the idea of contour banks has been used to develop the Fanya Juu terrace in Kenya - a bank built on the contour but constructed from the lower side and topped up as a bench terrace develops. However, attempts to adapt other techniques, such as graded banks and artificial waterways, have not been successful on small peasant farms on steep slopes.

Better systems of cropping and agroforestry could be developed and used on the steeper slopes being intensively farmed in East Africa. Valuable research is now being undertaken on this problem by ICRAF and IITA, but more work, particularly in applying the results of some of the more basic studies, remains to be done.

Research is often expensive and time consuming. Fortunately, research efforts can often be pooled by a number of countries that share similar conditions and problems; the results of such research can also be publicized by establishing simple research networks.

For example, little is currently known about the quantitative effects of soil erosion on productivity. FAO and SIDA are now helping several African countries establish systematic trials on the subject. Information networks based on newsletters are being used to keep research workers in different countries in touch and funds are being made available by donors to assist the participating countries. Other research priorities now need to be identified and similar networks established to reduce costs and to spread the results.

Research organized in this way can give rapid results and yield widespread benefits. Donors see the support of such efforts as an effective way of giving assistance.

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