Land Insecurity and Poverty in Africa

The primary challenge is reversing low agricultural productivity and poor economic performance driven by land insecurity in Africa. We want to break the stranglehold of poor land productivity, insecure land tenure, and underdeveloped value chains, which trap communities in a vicious cycle of persistent poverty. 

The success of previous programmes has been hindered for various reasons, including single discipline-focused research and a tendency to proffer externally-based solutions without inclusive technology development or listening to community-defined needs. This vision has been developed over several years with the participation of academics, communities, the private sector, NGOs, and policy-makers (the stakeholders).  

We adopt a participatory dialogue to co-produce novel holistic solutions that combine stakeholder knowledge and strengths with land productivity restoration technologies. Five workshops have been held in both Africa and the UK to date to engage with these stakeholders and to formulate research questions that capture the needs of the communities in addressing this challenge.