West Africa (WA) is among the most food insecure regions. Rapid human population growth and stagnating crop yields greatly contribute to this fact. Poor soil fertility, especially low plant available phosphorus (P) is constraining food production in the region. P-fertilizer use in WA is among the lowest in the world due to inaccessibility and high prices, often unaffordable to resource-poor subsistence farmers. This article provides an overview of soil P-deficiency in WA and opportunities to overcome it by exploiting sorghum and pearl millet genetic diversity.

The agricultural sector plays a key role in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). As the backbone of the economy, it affects society at many levels since national economies and people’s jobs, incomes and food security depend upon it. Climate change and variability pose a major threat to farmers in the region, which is already experiencing rising temperatures, shifting precipitation patterns, and increasing extreme events.

Drought is one of the major climatic hazards impacting on the various sectors including crop and livestock in the West African Sahel. Pastoral and agro-pastoral communities in the region are regularly affected by drought, with vulnerability differing with gender, age, wealth status (access to cropland and livestock endowment), geographic location, social networks, and previous exposure to drought. Effective interventions require regular monitoring of vulnerability to drought, for which various quantitative and qualitative approaches exist.

Characterization of the Short-eared Somali goat population around Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, was undertaken in a community-based and participatory approach. Range of participatory tools, including Focal Group Discussions, participatory mappings and transect walks, were employed to study the local community's Indigenous knowledge and practices in animal breeding. The breeding objective was defined in a participatory manner through own-flock ranking experiments.

The pastoral and agro-pastoral areas of Ethiopia cover around 65% of the country’s surface area. Rangeland resources are managed under collective common property arrangements, which are increasingly coming under pressure from both internal and external forces of change including alternative, but not necessarily ‘appropriate’, land uses.

This field manual provides guidance to support, mapping, planning and management in rangelands. It is based on experiences in Tanzania, but the tools presented can be useful for other contexts too.

Research conducted in Mauritania.

Despite the extensive efforts of rainwater harvesting and management (RWHM) interventions for moisture-stressed areas in Ethiopia, the adoption and wider dissemination of the newly introduced techniques have been generally meager. The objective of this study was, therefore, to develop appropriate RWHM techniques through a participatory planning process in the Central Rift Valley (CRV) dry lands of Ethiopia. To achieve this objective, a combination of literature reviews, focus group discussions, questionnaire surveys, agro-meteorological analyses and field experimentations were undertaken.

The demand for the control of safe food, from consumers the world over, has revolutionized the manner in which wild game meat harvesting occurs. In developed countries, food quality, food and human safety with quality controlling systems embracing environmental carbon footprint issues are constantly improving, for international harmonization at each level of production “from stable to table”, “farm to fork”, “field to yield” as well as from “cradle to grave”.