Media
UNCCD COP 16: Another setback for multilateral environmental and resource protection
Original post on IDOS Blogs Senior researcher at IDOS, agricultural economist and German representative on the UNCCD Science and Technology Committee, Dr. Michael Bruentrup reflects on last week’s negotiations in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
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UNCCD COP16 Side Event: The Role of Youth in Innovation for SLM
This current blog, co-authored by Kingnidé Wilfrid Adjimoti and Aiveen Donnelly, shares a recent project highlight of an official UNCCD COP16 Side Event, which was jointly organised by the INTERFACES team at IDOS and the GEO LDN, hosted by the University of Energy and Natural Resources in Ghana and run by GIZ.
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Geotools for smallholder farmers
This current blog written by PhD candidate at the Ruhr University Bochum, Stefanie Steinbach from the COINS regional project, discusses the question how digital tools and geodata can support smallholder farmers in West Africa to promote sustainable land use.
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Understanding local perceptions of land tenure security in Northern Benin using Mental Models
This current blog, collaboratively written by the DecLaRe colleagues from PIK and WASCAL, discusses a recent research effort in Northern Benin, where a unique mental model methodology to collect data has been employed to explore how different local communities’ groups perceive the benefits, limitations and border of holding an ADC.
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Blog #10 - Insights from the ITD Conference 2024
This current blog shares insights on good practice in transdisciplinary research funding on the bases of a workshop series with experts from the global North and South, culminating in a panel session as the International Transdisciplinary Conference in Utrecht.
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Blog #9 - Tropentag 2024 (KM4AgD)
This current blog summarises key messages from the pre-conference workshop at Tropentag 2024 in Vienna and invites all workshop participants and friends of the BMBF funded projects to join in upcoming Knowledge Cafes.
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Blog #8 - Fertilizer Microdosing
This current blog shares insights from the DecLaRe project on fertilizer microdosing to increase cereal production in heavily leached soils.
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Fufu Workshop with the Minodu Team
What is the Fufu workshop about? Fufu is a traditional dish from Togo and many other African countries. In the workshop, you will be introduced to the art of preparing Fufu, break a bit of a sweat, taste something delicious, and along the way, gather some impressions from Togo. Spoiler: It won’t look anything like the picture, because generative Artificial Intelligence really has no idea about Fufu.
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Building Bridges: Soldering for Climate Change Awareness
The workshop aimed to draw attention to the multi-faceted impacts of climate change by mediating knowledge through a hands-on approach with DIY electronics in which we soldered LEDs on a custom circuit board and thereby learned about the various regions of Togo in sub-Saharan West Africa.
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Blog #7 - Building across Horizons
This current blog shares insights from a collaborative workshop that the Minodu project team held in Togo in March 2024. The aim of the Minodu project is to process existing knowledge on the effects of climate change in a user-friendly way. Creating local networks and developing concrete approaches to solutions together with rural communities and students from the University of Kara is at the heart of the project.
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Blog #6 - An Eventful Month of June
June 2024 has been particularly eventful, as members of the INTERFACES project hosted many insightful events, but also participated in several key conferences dedicated to addressing some of the most pressing global issues.
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Blog #5 - Annual Meeting of the COINS Project
The COINS project meeting, held in Bonn from June 26 to 28, 2024, was conducted in a hybrid format with approximately 20 participants attending in person and an additional 15-20 participants joining online from Senegal, Ghana, and Kenya. The purpose of the meeting was to provide project updates, deliver presentations, and discuss the project’s objectives.
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Special Issue: Science in Support of Combatting Land Degradation
In celebration of the 30th anniversary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification and in recognition of the World Desertification and Drought Day, the INTERFACES team at IDOS and the NGO “Let’s Plant!” co-organised a panel discussion and interactive market place on 18 June 2024. This evening event gave space for organisations and people engaged in combating desertification, soil degradation, and drought to come together and exchange ideas, share their experiences, and build connections.
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Blog #4 - Institutionalising collaboration through InfoRange Community Committees in Namibia and Kenya
Mobile pastoral livestock production is a knowledge and information intensive production system integrated within overall rangeland management. In InfoRange, we seek to enhance information access to support pastoralists in their management decisions and practices concerning grazing and animal health, by co-developing digital tools.
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Blog #3 - Socio-economic Survey of Farmers in the Senegal River Valley
The objective of the COINS project is to promote sustainable intensification practices in both Senegal and Ghana. Initial ground activities involved a socio-economic survey in the Podor and Dagana departments of the Senegal River Valley (SRV), to assess the farmers’ perceptions of agricultural innovations and knowledge of their economic and social conditions.
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Blog #2 - Highlights from 2023 and Planned Activities for 2024
This first blog of 2024 will introduce the projects and summarise a selection of highlights from the past year along with some examples of planned activities for the next year.
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Blog #1 - Connecting Climate Knowledge Across Continents
As part of the Minodu project a hybrid collaborative university course was held simultaneously at the University of Kara, Togo and the University of the Arts in Berlin, Germany over the winter semester 2023/24.
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Good Funding Practices
Defining research objectives with non-academic and societal actors is essential to the transdisciplinary research process. This is a crucial building block to address increasingly complex societal problems, particularly in the domain of sustainable development
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Intervention Forecasting and Monitoring A Land Use Decision in Peri-Urban Hanoi
By co-developing a scientific framework, the project aims to forecast, implement, and monitor effective nutrition interventions in Vietnam and Myanmar.
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Impact pathways and forecasts of sustainable intensification practices
Impact pathway of ISFM as a sustainable intensification practice that can improve soil fertility status and increase productivity and farmers’ profits on existing land.
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Factors for improving resilience in access to and management of water, energy and food
Identifying and implementing adaptation strategies is vital to build resilience against against socio-economic challenges, particularly in vulnerable communities affected by climate change.
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Supporting Pathways to Sustainable Land Management in Africa
INTERFACES is an accompanying project that supports the four research projects DecLaRe, Minodu, InfoRange and COINS in driving change for sustainable land management in Sub-Saharan Africa.
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A steeplechase to land transformation
Our research in Northern Ghana is based around three hypotheses, aiming to identify feasible solutions for change.
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Participatory Approaches Enhance Sustainable Land Management
The INTERFACES project adopts a social learning approach for the development of gender-responsive theories of change to aid in the dissemination and uptake of sustainable land management innovations.
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RURAL21 - Research Article
The INTERFACES project backs four regional ventures run by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research and aimed at promoting sustainable land management in sub-Saharan Africa. Its mission focuses on developing change strategies to boost innovation and implementation processes. Link to article below.
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Fostering gender-responsive innovation adoption among smallholder farmers in Africa
Fostering new farming practices and innovation adoption among female and male smallholder farmers, including marginalised groups requires addressing the economic, environmental and socio-cultural dimensions of development and contribute to social justice and gender equity. This is not a self-evident process as some innovations have contributed to adverse environmental or social effects, resulting in low adoption rates and unsuccessful scaling of innovations. In this briefing series we highlight the reasons for low adoption rates among smallholder farmers and how gender-responsive innovation adoption can be fostered.
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MINODU: Fostering Local Sustainable Development Through Technology and Research
Rapid climate change is exposing subsistence farmers to enormous challenges, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. Several foreign aid programs have been set up to cope with these issues, many of which have focused on technical solutions. However, there seems to be a large gap between scientific research and the needs of local communities. Besides focusing on new ways to improve the resilience of local food production, there is also an urgent need to adapt available knowledge to the local context. Based on experiences from a project to co-create community networks in Togo in 2020, we aim to empower local stakeholders, including farmers and scientists, to adapt existing knowledge of sustainable crop farming to current practices. New modes of knowledge exchange can be established with the help of participatory design. These methods may help to foster a collective approach to learning that enables people to cope with global challenges on a local level, all while valuing the traditional practices of local farmers and enriching them with scientific knowledge.
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Colloquium Series - Dr. Eefje Aarnoudse (discussion)
Discussion: Dr. Eefje Aarnoudse "Rethinking research funding: What are appropriate funding conditions for transdisciplinary research in Africa?”
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Colloquium Series - Dr. Eefje Aarnoudse (presentation)
Presentation: Dr. Eefje Aarnoudse "Rethinking research funding: What are appropriate funding conditions for transdisciplinary research in Africa?”
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Funding conditions of transdisciplinary research for sustainable development in Africa
This video presents different voices in a dialogue on appropriate funding conditions for transdisciplinary research in Africa. It captures first-hand impressions from a workshop series that brought together research funders, researchers and practitioners from Germany and Africa to discuss the topic. The workshop series was organised in 2024 as part of the INTERFACES project. The video is a joint production of IDOS, FARA and H-BRS.
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Colloquium Series - Benjamin Abugri and Aiveen Donnelly (discussion)
Discussion: Benjamin Abugri and Aiveen Donnelly "Communities of Practice & Learning - An Essential Platform for Sustainable Land Management in African Agriculture".
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Colloquium series - Benjamin Abugri and Aiveen Donnelly (presentation)
Presentation: Benjamin Abugri and Aiveen Donnelly "Communities of Practice & Learning - An Essential Platform for Sustainable Land Management in African Agriculture".
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Making Wangatchi: Traditional vs New Approach - Interview with Oroudjo Amina (with french captions)
Mahounakpon Wilfried Tossou, a PhD student from the Univesrity of Parakou working on the DecLaRe projects, sits down for an interview with Miss Oroudjo Amina, a local cheese maker, to discuss the traditional method of making cheese and the new approach with a different coagulant.
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The Making of Wangatchi: Boukouserra Meets Science - locally produced cheese from cow milk
Sewanou Frimence A. Tossou, a PhD student from the University of Parakou, working on the DecLaRe project, explains the process of making local cheese "Wangatchi".
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Colloquium Series - Carina Lange and Dr. Damghane Oudanou (discussion)
Discussion: Carina Lange and Dr. Damghane Oudanou “Minodu – experiences from fostering local sustainable development through technology and research”
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Colloquium Series - Carina Lange and Dr. Damghane Oudanou (presentation)
Presentation: Carina Lange and Dr. Damghane Oudanou “Minodu – experiences from fostering local sustainable development through technology and research”
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Tropentag Conference 2024 - KM4AgD
The BMBF funded programme INTERFACES and the four regional projects, COINS, DecLaRe, InfoRange and Minodu came together at the Tropentag Conference 2024 from 11 to 13 September in Vienna. Highlight was the pre-conference workshop organised by INTERFACES. This workshop saw an exchange from across the BMBF funded regional projects on sustainable land management in Africa under the FONA umbrella, on the various steps of knowledge co-creation and management in agriculture. One special aspect was deepened to give impulses for discussion: The African Knowledge Management for Agricultural Development (KM4AgD) system provided by the Forum for African Research in Agriculture (FARA)—the apex continental organisation responsible for coordinating and advocating for agricultural research for development, including insights from three of this year’s participants.
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Colloquium series - Dr. Jonas Meier (presentation)
Presentation: Dr. Jonas Meier "Co-Developing Innovations for Sustainable Land Management”
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Colloquium Series - Dr. Jonas Meier (discussion)
Discussion: Dr. Jonas Meier "Co-Developing Innovations for Sustainable Land Management”
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Colloquium Series - Prof. Dr. Andreas Bürkert (discussion)
Discussion: Prof. Dr. Andreas Bürkert "Interdisciplinary Approach to Strengthen Land Resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa”
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Colloquium Series - Prof. Dr. Andreas Bürkert (presentation)
Presentation: Prof. Dr. Andreas Bürkert "Interdisciplinary Approach to Strengthen Land Resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa”
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The Knowledge Management for Agriculture Development (KM4AgD) agenda for Africa
Knowledge is at the heart of sustainable development. Today’s societies are characterized by a predominant and still growing share of knowledge work at all levels of institutions. Knowledge is essential because it supports decision-making and evidence-based planning and increases institutional credibility. It is critical for research organizations because research is vital to generating knowledge.
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Colloquium Series - Prof. Dr. Brigitte Kaufmann and Dr. Hussein Wario (presentation)
Presentation: Prof. Dr. Brigitte Kaufmann and Dr. Hussein Wario "Sustainable land management in sub‐Saharan Africa: Improving livelihoods through local research”
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Colloquium Series - Prof. Dr. Brigitte Kaufmann and Dr. Hussein Wario (discussion)
Presentation: Prof. Dr. Brigitte Kaufmann and Dr. Hussein Wario "Sustainable land management in sub‐Saharan Africa: Improving livelihoods through local research”
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Colloquium Series - Dr. Frederike Klümper (discussion)
Discussion: Dr. Frederike Klümper "Empowering communities for a just transition towards land degradation neutrality: evidence from Benin, Kenya, Madagascar and Malawi"
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Colloquium Series - Dr. Frederike Klümper (presentation)
Presentation: Dr. Frederike Klümper "Empowering communities for a just transition towards land degradation neutrality: evidence from Benin, Kenya, Madagascar and Malawi"
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Dr. Colin Stanley on InfoRange project
Dr. Colin Stanley explains about the InfoRange project during an interview on Namibia Connect.
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Colloquium Series - Dr. Till Below (discussion)
Discussion: Dr. Till Below "Towards climate resilient agri‐food systems in Africa: Providing farmers with climate data for informed decision-making”
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Colloquium Series - Dr. Till Below (presentation)
Presentation: Dr. Till Below "Towards climate resilient agri‐food systems in Africa: Providing farmers with climate data for informed decision-making”
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Working with Theories of Change: The INTERFACES Approach
Visual Report and Documentary of INTERFACES: COINS & DecLaRe Workshop in Tamale, Ghana organized and facilitated by INTERFACES Implementers: FARA, WASCAL, UBIDS, ZEF, IDOS & INRES
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Farmer Mahama Yakubu shares his experience practicing ISFM in the Tolon District, Ghana
Visual Report and Documentary of INTERFACES: COINS & DecLaRe Workshop Tolon District Field Visit in Tamale, Ghana organized and facilitated by INTERFACES Implementers: FARA, WASCAL, UBIDS, ZEF, IDOS & INRES
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Colloquium Series - Juliane Wiesenhütter and Nina Bisom (discussion)
Discussion: Juliane Wiesenhütter and Nina Bisom "United for land - Partners, networks and contributions from a German perspective"
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Colloquium Series - Juliane Wiesenhütter and Nina Bisom (presentation)
Presentation: Juliane Wiesenhütter and Nina Bisom "United for land - Partners, networks and contributions from a German perspective"
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Colloquium Series - Dr. Constance Awinpoka Akurugu (discussion)
Discussion: Dr. Constance Awinpoka Akurugu “Gender-based violence in northern Ghana and the role of traditional leaders in combating it”
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Colloquium Series - Dr. Constance Awinpoka Akurugu (presentation)
Presentation: Dr. Constance Awinpoka Akurugu “Gender-based violence in northern Ghana and the role of traditional leaders in combating it”
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Colloquium Series - Dr. Heike Baumüller (discussion)
Discussion: Dr. Heike Baumüller "Digitalization in Agriculture: Potentials and Pitfalls"
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Colloquium Series - Dr. Heike Baumüller (presentation)
Presentation: Dr. Heike Baumüller "Digitalization in Agriculture: Potentials and Pitfalls"
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Impression Video Tropentag 2023
The BMBF funded programme INTERFACES and the four regional projects, COINS, DecLaRe, InfoRange and Minodu came together at the Tropentag Conference from the 20th to 22nd of September in Berlin. Highlight was the pre-conference workshop organised by INTERFACES.
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Colloquium Series - Dr. David Anaafo (discussion)
Discussion: Dr. David Anaafo "Will customary land rights hold in Ghana"
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Colloquium Series - Dr. David Anaafo (presentation)
Presentation: Dr. David Anaafo "Will customary land rights hold in Ghana"
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Colloquium Series - Prof. Hornidge (discussion)
Discussion: Prof. Dr. Anna‐Katharina Hornidge "Research for the global common Good. Science as a World-making Activity"
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Colloquium Series - Prof. Hornidge (presentation)
Presentation: Prof. Dr. Anna‐Katharina Hornidge "Research for the global common Good. Science as a World-making Activity"
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Keynote with Johns Kharika (UNCCD)
This video was taken during the first Status Seminar held in hybrid form (first day only) and online 26-28 April 2023 at IDOS in Bonn.
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Impression Video First Status Seminar
The German Federal Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) funds transdisciplinary research on sustainable land management in order to improve livelihoods in sub-Saharan Africa.
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Insights into the research project INTERFACES
In the video, the project leader Tina Beuchelt presents the project, which explores pathways to support sustainable land management in Africa.
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E-learning certificate on Research and Innovation for Sustainable Land Management in Africa
In October 2024 the research group from H-BRS IZNE of the INTERFACES project met partners and stakeholders in Ghana for a workshops on the topic “Sustainable Land Management in Africa”.
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KM4AgD Challenge
17 Oct 2024 – INTERFACES Colloquium Series: “Communities of Practice and Learning – D-Groups” with Benjamin Abugri and Aiveen Donnelly. 24 Oct 2024 – Please join us on D-Groups for preliminary discussions. 31 Oct 2024 – Knowledge Café Validation with Narcisse Yehouenou and Kingnide Wilfrid Adjimoti. 27 Nov 2024 – Please join us on D-Groups for preliminary discussions. 4 Dec 2024 – Knowledge Café Validation with Dr. Kisito Gandji, Melika Vodounhessi and Dorcas Sanginga Alame.
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Science Communication and Knowledge Management
The forum encompasses all African and non-African stakeholders committed to enhancing Africa’s agricultural productivity, competitiveness, and markets to help achieve the national, regional, continental and global SDGs for poverty and hunger reduction, and environmental sustainability. A large part of knowledge management in INTERFACES will be based on FARA’s proven methodologies and platforms and will systematically merge the regional projects’ findings with other processes and stakeholders involved in sustainable land management in Sub-Sahara Africa. Press Releases
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