Land restoration can be a key pathway to achieving food security and improving livelihoods for some of the most vulnerable people living in Africa’s drylands. But as the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration draws closer, it has become clear that scaling up restoration efforts requires options that will work for different people in different places – not a one-size-fits-all approach.

A five-year project funded by the EU and IFAD started with the recognition that farmers are agents of change: as stewards of the land, they are constantly innovating. Therefore, empowering farmers to test and compare different restoration efforts such as increasing crop diversity and implementing agroforestry and tailored soil and water conservation methods – an approach known as ‘options by context’ – could help them meet challenges as they arise.

By bringing key partners from the public and private sectors, research, extension, market and governance institutions to work together in a co-learning cycle, the project helped create communities of practice that were able to better use their resources to restore degraded land. Over 100,000 beneficiaries were reached directly and indirectly across Niger, Mali, Ethiopia and Kenya. In Kenya, tree survival on farmers’ fields increased from 30 percent in 2016 to over 80 percent in 2019.

Researchers also identified potential synergies between restoration practices and gender equality, engaging with over 500 farming households to learn how the new restoration methods introduced by scientists affected livelihoods and the division of labour between men and women. “Women, in particular, face challenges related to food security because they tend to be the main food providers,” said Leigh Winowiecki, a soil systems scientist and leader of the Soil and Land Health theme.

Scientists discussed their findings in the IFAD podcast ‘Building back better: Land restoration, gender and research ‘in’ development’.