Project Planning Workshop on Food Security in East Africa

Date and venue: 27.-29. June 2011, Nairobi, Kenya



In the framework of the trilateral German-French-African Initiative of BMBF and French Ministries, the’BioStressConsortium’ organized by 'Tropenzentrum' of University Göttingen in collaboration with several faculties of UGOE, University Kassel, University of Veterinary Sciences, Hannover, Potsdam- Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), World Forestry Institute Hamburg, French counterparts and African partners held a project planning workshop in Nairobi, Kenya, from June 27 to 29, with over 60 participants, among them 13 scientists from German side, on

Improved food and biomass production through enhancing the resilience and adaptation of the agro-silvo-pastoral and mixed crop livestock farming systems to stress under environmental variability in semi-arid and arid regions of East Africa (Kenya, Tanzania).

Participating French partners are L'Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD), La Recherche Agronomique pour le Developpement (CIRAD), Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA). African partners are universities, national research institutes and international agricultural research organizations from Kenya and Tanzania: University of Nairobi, Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), Kenya; Sokoine Agricultural University, University of Dar Es Salaam, Ukiriguru Agricultural Research Station, Tanzania; CG centres International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Bioversity International, World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), African Insect Science for Food and Health (icipe), International Centre for Tropical Agriculture, Colombia (CIAT/TSBF), International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Biosciences Eastern and Central Africa (BecA), International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT).

Summary

The BioStressConsortium of African, German and French partners will develop measures for small- scale farming/pastoral systems to cope with environmental change in the semi-arid to arid regions of East Africa (Tanzania, Kenya) in a highly interdisciplinary, holistic approach.

Aim

Stabilize and increase food and biomass production in agro-silvo-pastoral/mixed crop-livestock production systems by improving tolerance of crops and livestock to biotic and abiotic stress.

Objectives

• Understand the vulnerability of the existing farming system to abiotic and biotic stress

• Improve adaptability and resilience to stress of single components (crop, tree, livestock) and of
their interplay in the system along the production chain in an experimental approach

- from microscale (disease diagnosis, crop/livestock resistance to stress)

- to macroscale (improved cropping, tree management and animal husbandry systems, water
management and land use)

• Capacity building on postgraduate level by ‘training through research’ and improving the
educational system at African universities