Minodu
Climate change and population growth in sub-Saharan Africa make it difficult to manage land sustainably while conserving natural resources. There is often a gap between existing, scientific concepts on sustainable land management and concrete solutions on the ground.
The Minodu project aims to close this gap by processing existing knowledge in a user-friendly way, creating local networks and developing concrete solution approaches together with the communities. It also considers how results can be shared with groups that have limited access to digital technologies. The goal is to provide and improve knowledge on topics such as climate change, sustainability, water management, and desertification, as well as relevant technologies, through various participation formats.
Together with communities in Togo, the project team is working out how to make concrete improvements on the ground toward more sustainable land use, what resources are available, and how stakeholders can benefit from a shared network with other actors. Digital technologies and social action are combined to create new opportunities and build connections between different groups. Through this hands-on approach, knowledge is sustainably anchored in all participants and an emotional connection to the topic is created.
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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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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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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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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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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In this blog an annual overview of 2024 is giving including insights and highlights from across the projects as well as an outlook into activities for 2025.
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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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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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Discussion: Carina Lange and Dr. Damghane Oudanou “Minodu – experiences from fostering local sustainable development through technology and research”
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Presentation: Carina Lange and Dr. Damghane Oudanou “Minodu – experiences from fostering local sustainable development through technology and research”
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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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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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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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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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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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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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