International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability

International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability 4 (2006) 39–60

Site selection to test an integrated approach to agricultural research for development: combining expert knowledge and participatory Geographic Information System methods

P.K. Thornton1, A. Stroud2, N. Hatibu3, C. Legg4, S. Ly5, S. Twomlow6, K. Molapong7, A. Notenbaert1, R. Kruska1 and R. von Kaufmann8 1International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), Nairobi, Kenya, 2Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in East and Central Africa (ASARECA), Kampala, Uganda, 3Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in East and Central Africa (ASARECA), Gigiri, Nairobi, Kenya, 4International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), c/o Lambourn (UK) Limited, Croydon, UK, 5West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development (WECARD/CORAF), INRAN, Niamey, Niger, 6International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT-SADC), Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, 7Southern African Development Community Directorate for Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources (SADC-FANR), Gaborone, Botswana and 8Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA), Accra, Ghana

The sub-Saharan Africa challenge programme is designed to address the problems of failures of agricultural markets, inappropriate policies and natural resource degradation, that contribute to the continuing deterioration of livelihoods and food security in the region. It is seeking to do this by redefining the roles of scientists and farmers through collaborative learning processes, addressing questions about the level, timing, type and form of participation, as well as the most effective approaches and methods to foster them. The research domains of the programme deal with sustainable intensification of smallholder agriculture, the sustainable management of natural resources, the development of efficient markets, and the promotion of enabling policies. One question that was addressed in designing the initiative was deciding where to work so as to maximize the chances of successful testing of this new approach, so that it would lead to significant reductions of rural poverty. A participatory process was put in place to design a framework to accomplish this site selection, and then to apply it in west, east and southern Africa. A mixture of spatial data analysis and expert knowledge on spatial and non-spatial factors was used, and one primary site in each region was identified to form the basis for the next phase of the challenge programme. Several lessons were learnt from the process, including the importance of adapting the methods to actual conditions, the increased utility of targetting when the quantitative and the qualitative are freely combined, and the continued need for baseline spatial and non-spatial data to improve the targeting of research in the future that is designed to alleviate poverty in sub-Saharan Africa.

Keywords: Integrated natural resources management, spatial data, sub-Saharan Africa, targeting

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