Multiple actors, multiple strategies: how to incentivize the uptake of sustainable land management practices by smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa
On 28 May, Dr. Eefje Aarnoudse and Monalisa Maremba from Hochschule Bonn-Rhein Sieg (HBRS) presented preliminary results from their study on incentive strategies in Ghana. 23 participants listened to the presentation entitled “Multiple actors, multiple strategies: how to incentivize the uptake of sustainable land management practices by smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa”. Dr. Aarnoudse explained that the study looked specifically at the motivations of those who design and implement incentives for sustainable land management because this is a gap within the research field that is currently dominated by studies on farmers’ behaviour reacting on incentive mechanisms. The study presented in the colloquium analysed the responses of 21 interviewees from local to international actors belonging to different groups (governmental, non-governmental, private sector) on four incentive categories, business related (e.g. farm inputs), financial (e.g. funding), capacity strengthening (e.g. farmer field days), land access (e.g. advocacy for tenure security). Interesting aspects of the analysis showed that different categories of respondents preferred partly the same incentive categories but for different reasons.
As the results were preliminary and covered only part of the study’s research objectives thus far, the valuable contributions to the discussion helped to provide more clarity, showed synergies to other projects and gave the authors additional ideas for the further analysis of their data.
