The decline of soil fertility is a major threat to agriculture and food security in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Enforced organic matter production by modern agroforestry systems (planting of nitrogen fixing trees, leguminous shrubs together with food crops), as well as the use of mulch and compost have shown to increase and maintain soil fertility.

Yet these techniques have failed to be implemented in farmers’ cropping systems on a large scale. This research project, therefore, aims at identifying the agronomic, socio-economic, cultural, and communicative reasons that promote the adoption of tested agricultural technologies. We assume the integration of farmers in the design and management of innovations to be important to reverse the trend of declining soil fertility. In the proposed project farmer-driven soil fertility management techniques will be developed jointly with researchers at both on-station and on-farm levels.

As part of an outreach campaign these innovations will be disseminated to farmers’ communities in order to assess challenges and to identify hindering and favoring factors associated with its adoption. The application of research results in farming practice is an important focus of the project with communication involved in all processes. Political and societal groups will be involved and informed on the outcome of the project in order to influence their working procedures.

The study will be conducted in relatively humid and arid climatic zones of Mali, Ghana, Kenya and Zambia. In each of these countries FiBL and IAM/ZHAW researchers will collaborate with partners at universities and research stations, extension services and
farmers. Most research will be done by PhD students and associated MSc studies supervised by local and international experts in the respective field, leading to peer reviewed publications.

The study is expected to improve research design, provide easily adoptable soil fertility management techniques, address institutional barriers and soil governance, change habits and attitudes of farmers and local society towards agricultural sustainability, and identify the best processes of communication according to farmers' needs. It is further expected that our interdisciplinary approach applied in the four countries will be scalable to the whole Sub-Saharan Africa. This project has the potential to contribute significantly to  agricultural productivity, environmental stability, and the resilience of food systems.