Nile 5

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October 15, 2014

Innovation platforms to enhance participation in rainwater management in Ethiopia

Posted by Ewen Le Borgne under CPWF, CRP5, East Africa, Ethiopia, Gender, ILRI, Innovation Systems, IWMI, NBDC, Nile, Nile 2, Nile 5, Participation | Tags: , |
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Activities conducted as part of NBDC innovation platform work in Fogera (photo credit: ILRI/Apollo Habtamu).

Activities conducted as part of NBDC innovation platform work in Fogera (photo credit: ILRI/Apollo Habtamu).

This paper draws lessons from two years of work with ‘innovation platforms’ that were established by the Nile Basin Development Challenge (NBDC) program in an attempt to strengthen landscape-level rainwater management in Ethiopia. The NDBC’s work included the use of an innovation fund to support pilot interventions.

This paper particularly reviews questions of political economy and equity in platform activities and examines decision-making processes, the roles and level of influence of different platform members, the nature of platform-community relations and the extent to which different groups are benefiting.

The information presented in this working paper was gathered from a mixture of sources: interviews conducted with platform members; observation of meetings and activities by NBDC staff; official minutes of platform meetings and other associated events (e.g. training sessions) and informal discussions between NBDC staff and platform members.

This paper is the latest of a ‘research for development (R4D)’ series of working papers developed by the Challenge Program for Water and Food (CPWF).

Read the working paper ‘Innovation Platforms to Enhance Participation in Rainwater Management: Lessons from The Nile Basin Development Challenge with a Particular Focus on Political Economy and Equity Issues‘.

Discover the rest of the CPWF’s R4D working paper series.

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June 20, 2014

Work stories, stories work: Nile BDC guide on producing digital stories and photofilms

Posted by Ewen Le Borgne under CPWF, CRP5, Ethiopia, Film and Video, Knowledge and Information, NBDC, Nile, Nile 2, Nile 5, Participation | Tags: , , |
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The Nile Basin Development Challenge (NBDC) and the wider Challenge Program for Water and Food tried out several communication tools and approaches to make its research more useful and more likely to be used.

Among these tools and approaches, digital stories or photofilms) have proven to be great ways to place stories and human lives at the core of our work and thereby to capture and communicate the research we have conducted in more effective ways. Digital stories  help bring a lively and authentic feel to the stories shared. They can be used at field level for real life stories, as well as at higher levels to summarize conceptual work in a simpler way.

See an example of these digital stories below: a story weaving together the eight key messages of the Nile Basin Development Challenge and introducing a new paradigm for rainwater and land management in Ethiopia:

 

 

The latest NBDC technical report is an introductory guide to help people use photos, videos and audio files to develop such digital stories. The guide was produced for internal use by the Nile Basin Development Challenge (NBDC) but has wider usefulness.

The guide explains how to make a digital story. From interviewing and photographing to editing the pictures and audio-recordings and finally merging image and sound.

Download the guide

Discover 14 digital stories developed under the NBDC:

Discover these and all other NBDC videos

More on digital stories and photofilms at ILRI</em)

 

May 22, 2014

Improve markets, value chains and multi-stakeholder processes to enhance benefits and sustainability of interventions – NBDC key message #8

Posted by Ewen Le Borgne under Animal Feeding, ASSP, CRP5, East Africa, Ethiopia, Film and Video, Innovation Systems, Livestock-Water, Markets, NBDC, Nile, Nile 5, NRM | Tags: , |
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In late 2013, the Nile Basin Development Challenge developed eight key messages. Taken together, these messages form a new paradigm that can help further transform policies and programs and better enable poor smallholder farmers to improve their food security, livelihoods and incomes while conserving the natural resource base.

The eighth  key message from the Nile Basin Development Challenge is to ‘improve markets, value chains and multi-stakeholder processes to enhance benefits and sustainability of interventions’. It proposes to enhance market benefits of soil and water conservation interventions by e.g. planting forages creating bio-mass and feeding livestock, leading to further benefits further down the line.

See the overall digital story ‘An integrated watershed rainwater management paradigm for Ethiopia: Key messages from the NBDC‘.

Download the brief covering the full set of key messages.

Read the full technical report “A new integrated watershed rainwater management paradigm for Ethiopia: Key messages from the Nile Basin Development Challenge, 2009–2013“

This digital story was produced to communicate the key messages resulting from the Nile Basin Development Challenge (NBDC). The Nile BDC aimed to improve the livelihoods of farmers in the Ethiopian highlands through land and water management and was funded by the Challenge Program for Water and Food. The eight key messages constitute a ‘new integrated watershed rainwater management paradigm’ and are based on the outputs and outcomes of trans-disciplinary scientific research for development

 

May 5, 2014

Strengthen and transform institutional and human capacities – NBDC key message #3

Posted by Ewen Le Borgne under Capacity Strengthening, CRP5, East Africa, Ethiopia, Film and Video, NBDC, Nile, Nile 5, NRM | Tags: , |
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In late 2013, the Nile Basin Development Challenge developed eight key messages. Taken together, these messages form a new paradigm that can help further transform policies and programs and better enable poor smallholder farmers to improve their food security, livelihoods and incomes while conserving the natural resource base.

In this third message Simon Langan (co-Basin leader and Ethiopia country director for the International Water Management Institute) reminds us that capacity development for rainwater management strategies at landscape scale requires a strong focus on development agents, helping them access resources, develop soft skills and strengthen the development agents’ system at institutional scale.

See the overall digital story ‘An integrated watershed rainwater management paradigm for Ethiopia: Key messages from the NBDC‘.

Download the brief covering the full set of key messages.

Read the full technical report “A new integrated watershed rainwater management paradigm for Ethiopia: Key messages from the Nile Basin Development Challenge, 2009–2013“

This digital story was produced to communicate the key messages resulting from the Nile Basin Development Challenge (NBDC). The Nile BDC aimed to improve the livelihoods of farmers in the Ethiopian highlands through land and water management and was funded by the Challenge Program for Water and Food. The eight key messages constitute a ‘new integrated watershed rainwater management paradigm’ and are based on the outputs and outcomes of trans-disciplinary scientific research for development

 

April 14, 2014

The Nile Basin Development Challenge: Methods, outputs and outcomes – A glimpse at NBDC science

Posted by Ewen Le Borgne under Books and Chapters, CRP5, East Africa, Ethiopia, ICRAF, ILRI, Innovation Systems, IWMI, NBDC, Nile, Nile 5, Presentation, Report | Tags: , |
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The Nile Basin Development Challenge (NBDC) is one of six global focal basins of the Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF). The overall objective of the CPWF program is to increase water productivity and resilience of social and ecological systems, through broad partnerships and research that leads to local impact and wider change.
Within this framework, the NBDC has set out to improve and build on rainwater management strategies as a way to improve livelihoods and reduce poverty. The focus of the work has been on the Blue Nile where rainfed agriculture dominates and over 80% of the population relies on subsistence, rainfed agriculture. In contrast, the downstream countries, principally Egypt and Sudan, are dominated by large-scale irrigated agriculture. However they will also potentially benefit from improvements in rainwater management upstream through reductions in land degradation and associated soil erosion which when transported downstream reduces the efficacy of irrigation schemes.

To meet the Nile Basin Development Challenge, it was found necessary to adopt an outcome logic model in which a range of approaches have been used to generate outputs and outcomes to support policy development and enhance best practices in relation to selected land management. These are briefly presented in summary here with subsequent papers in the proceedings developing the issues in greater a depth.

See the presentation:

Read the paper

See the full proceedings of the NBDC Science meeting

This paper was first presented at the Nile Basin Development Challenge Science meeting. The NBDC Science meeting was held on 9 and 10 July 2013 at the ILRI-Ethiopia campus, with the objectives to exchange experiences and research results across NBDC scientists involved in the NBDC projects and to discuss challenges and possible solutions.

 

March 15, 2014

Nile BDC research and outcomes in summary

Posted by Ewen Le Borgne under CPWF, CRP5, East Africa, Ethiopia, ILRI, Innovation Systems, IWMI, Livestock-Water, NBDC, Nile, Nile 5, NRM | Tags: |
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The Nile Basin

The Nile Basin

As the Nile Basin Development Challenge (NBDC) comes to an end this short document from the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food offers a summary of research conducted in the past four years.

It covers:

  • What the NBDC was about
  • The main challenges addressed
  • The eight key messages identified in 2013
  • Some outcomes and lessons

As much NBDC work is slowly integrated into CGIAR research programs on Water, Land and Ecosystems and on Integrated Systems for the Humid Tropics, this summary is a neat and short introduction to some essential issues that NBDC has left as a legacy to improve land and water management in Ethiopia and the wider Nile Basin.

Read the full Nile Basin Summary

 

February 17, 2014

Integrated termite management in degraded crop land in Diga District – A glimpse at NBDC science

Posted by Ewen Le Borgne under Animal Biosciences, Books and Chapters, CRP5, East Africa, Ethiopia, ILRI, Integrated Sciences, Livestock-Water, NBDC, Nile, Nile 2, Nile 5, NRM, Presentation, Report | Tags: , , |
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Termites are a major pest in the semi-arid and sub-humid tropics. They pose a serious threat to agricultural crops, forestry seedlings, rangelands and wooden structures. In Ethiopia the problem is particularly serious in the western part of the country, specifically in Wollega Zones of Oromia Region. In the past, several attempts were made to reduce damage caused by termites, including extensive termite mound poisoning campaigns. These interventions not only had a negative effect on the environment, but were also largely ineffective.

Based on previous work in Uganda showing that adding organic matter to the soil diverts termites from the plant and functions as alternative feed source, a project was commenced by the Challenge Program for Water and Food (CPWF). In partnership with IWMI and Makerere University, ILRI and Wollega University took the lead in working with local stakeholders to identify sustainable solutions to address the termite problem in Diga, Ethiopia. The research consisted of two major activities; 1) a baseline study to better understand the relation between land use, water, termites and local institutions; and 2) the design and testing of identified interventions.

The baseline findings indicated that termite damage depends on various biophysical and socio-institutional factors, which requires an integrated, but also targeted, termite management approach; two termite species are locally recognized, but level of knowledge highly varies among farmers within and between kebeles. Various trials were designed for on-farm experimentation using cattle manure and crop residues as alternative feed source for termites in combination with other cultivation techniques.

The result obtained indicated that application of cattle manure and crop residues increases the organic matter content of the soil by 24.5 and 13.9%—grain yield of maize by 38.8 and 16.7% and reduces termite count per plant by 29.6 and 21.6% as compared to the control treatment, respectively. The results are in line with farmers’ own evaluation of the trials. Results and implications are discussed.

See the presentation:

Read the paper

See the full proceedings of the NBDC Science meeting

Read the technical report No. 9 “Integrated termite management for improved  rainwater management: A synthesis of African experiences”

This paper was first presented at the Nile Basin Development Challenge Science meeting. The NBDC Science meeting was held on 9 and 10 July 2013 at the ILRI-Ethiopia campus, with the objectives to exchange experiences and research results across NBDC scientists involved in the NBDC projects and to discuss challenges and possible solutions.

 

January 24, 2014

Improving agricultural water productivity through integrated termite management – A glimpse at NBDC science

Posted by Ewen Le Borgne under Books and Chapters, CRP5, East Africa, Ethiopia, ILRI, Integrated Sciences, NBDC, Nile, Nile 5, NRM, Presentation, Report | Tags: , , , , |
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Termite infestation is symptomatic of severe land degradation in many semi-arid regions of the Nile Basin. One characteristic of land degradation is low organic matter (OM) reserves in vegetative biomass and soil. One consequence is excessive rainwater depletion through non-productive evaporation and runoff leading to low agricultural water productivity and diminished livelihoods.

CPWF research demonstrated that rapid restoration of pasture production is possible by providing manure through night corralling of cattle prior to re-seeding termite affected rangeland in Uganda. In degraded Ethiopian and Ugandan croplands, preliminary results also suggest that application of maize or sorghum stover to growing maize crops reduces termite damage and associate yield losses. Termites appear to prefer feeding on litter, manure and stover rather than on living plant material.

We hypothesize that sustainable crop and livestock production requires a minimum threshold of available dry-season ‘litter’ to avoid termite-driven destruction. We propose an integrated termite management (ITM) approach that involves establishment of sufficient OM reserves to sustain termites and other ecosystems services. One anticipated consequence is enabling termites to resume their beneficial roles in promoting nutrient recycling, infiltration and aeration of soil.

In this context, ITM requires an appropriate mix of relevant bio-physical and socio-economic interventions. Besides providing water for animal and crop production, the process of rebuilding OM reserves on degraded termite affected rainfed agricultural land requires additional water. We anticipate that the long-term results of increasing OM reserves will be higher agricultural water productivity, increased crop and animal production and improved livelihoods.

See the presentation:

Read the paper

See the full proceedings of the NBDC Science meeting

Read the technical report No. 9 “Integrated termite management for improved  rainwater management: A synthesis of African experiences”

This paper was first presented at the Nile Basin Development Challenge Science meeting. The NBDC Science meeting was held on 9 and 10 July 2013 at the ILRI-Ethiopia campus, with the objectives to exchange experiences and research results across NBDC scientists involved in the NBDC projects and to discuss challenges and possible solutions.

 

January 4, 2014

Communication and knowledge management in the CPWF – an interview with Michael Victor

Posted by Ewen Le Borgne under CPWF, CRP5, Ethiopia, ILRI, Innovation Systems, Interview, Knowledge and Information, Mekong, NBDC, Nile, Nile 5 | Tags: , , |
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Communication and knowledge management (KM) are among the pillars of the ‘Research for Development’ (R4D) approach of the Nile Basin Development Challenge and the wider Challenge Program for Water and Food (CPWF), as the recently published NBDC institutional history stressed.

On 2 and 3 December 2013,  the CPWF organized a workshop on communication and knowledge management to review the results of CPWF in these areas.

The workshop involved twelve participants from the six basins involved in CPWF (Andes, Ganges, Limpopo, Mekong, Nile and Volta), mostly communication/KM specialists but also the basin leaders for the Andes and Limpopo basins and an external consultant. Over the two days, they presented their communication and KM work and teased out some stories that illustrated the successes and challenges of each Basin’s experience. Finally, the group collectively developed a series of a) specific innovations that they thought were excellent examples that might be applied elsewhere and b) lessons and principles that matter for CKM to be performing better in wider programs.

The NBDC case was presented by Ewen Le Borgne:

Following this workshop, Michael Victor, the communication and knowledge management coordinator for CPWF was interviewed by Ewen Le Borgne to reflect back on the objectives and results of CPWF and NBDC. 

Ewen Le Borgne (ELB): What did CPWF set out to do with communication and knowledge management?

Michael Victor (MV):

When I arrived as a ‘comms guy’ I wanted to show that communication is not just about stories, but in CGIAR there was a lot of segmentation and silos. Boru Douthwaite (then head of CPWF Innovation and Impact) was very visionary about the integration of KM, comms, information management, monitoring and evaluation (M&E), so we had this great idea about integrating all these domains, wondering how to work together with people working in these related domains. And we struggled with that. We had a breakthrough meeting in 2012 where we started to see that learning was in the middle. The tools used in M&E (e.g. Outcome Mapping, Social Network Analysis) are not exclusive to it, they can be used for a whole series of purposes. There was recognition that we were bringing different expertise around similar tools. What we set out to do was to develop this overall approach, recognizing that we were moving towards programmatic approach to KM. this meant that different aspects of KM (M&E, Comms and Info) were seen as a strategic function helping research get to outcomes, rather than as administrative or support functions.

Michael Victor, leading communication work in the Challenge Program for Water and Food (Photo credit: CPWF)

Michael Victor, leading communication work in the Challenge Program for Water and Food (Photo credit: CPWF)

(ELB): What worked and what didn’t, generally?

(MV):  By the end, what worked well was this blurred boundaries approach. Everyone recognizes the role of KM in R4D, it’s very clear. That worked really well. Our whole decentralized approach worked really well, having this range of KM approaches across different basins, and how it came together was very valuable.

What didn’t work very well was moving communication activities beyond products and making sure they are seen as part of a wider change process.  We also did not evaluate and monitor our KM activities that well. The ‘learning’ or research on these aspects were weak and therefore has been difficult to show the benefits of this approach.

Perhaps also the comms side came off too strong, while other people (e.g. some basin leaders) wanted to understand the KM process behind this work.

(ELB): Specifically about the NBDC?

(MV):  When I started, I wanted to build upon the initial basins that were already developing their systems. Peter Ballantyne had this great approach of using NBDC as an experiment. I realized he had a vision and had the tools to do it. So I piggybacked what Peter did e.g. with CGSpace, rolling out wikis. NBDC were the first basin to roll out with the Mekong (and Andes).

One of the great things for NBDC was testing out all these tools and seeing it as an experiment for when CRPs were to be rolled out more widely

From the Mekong we also took ideas related to branding and identify (where the basin logos came from).

No other basin was developing anything replicable. NBDC was trying things in their institutional context, linking with innovation platforms, embedding comms and KM in the basin etc.

(ELB): How do we capitalize on the NBDC and CPWF work on communication and knowledge management?

(MV):  What we did last week (i.e. with the kmc4CRP workshop): Working with CGIAR Research Programs and focusing on one-on-one, face-to-face interactions, making sure that we have the stories readily accessible. We should try to get – whenever we can – other people to use existing websites, wikis etc. disseminating strategically.

See the results from the CPWF Communication and KM workshop

 

December 7, 2013

Rhetoric versus realities – A glimpse at NBDC science

Posted by Ewen Le Borgne under CRP5, East Africa, Ethiopia, NBDC, Nile, Nile 5, Presentation | Tags: , , |
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This paper (which relates to the fifth paper from the Challenge Program for Water and Food ‘Research for Development’ series) is the first in a series of three interrelated papers and focuses on planning and implementation modalities of Rainwater Management (RWM) Strategies. It is part of the NBDC project ‘On integrated RWM strategies—technologies, institutions and policies’.The project is underpinned by the recognition that integrated RWM needs to combine technologies, policies and institutions and be developed through multi-stakeholder engagement to foster innovation.

Three woredas were selected for the research—Jeldu and Diga in Oromia Region and Fogera in Amhara Region. The research on planning and implementation of RWM strategies is guided by the hypothesis that there is a gap between available policy and guidelines and specific planning and implementation procedures.

Research findings conclude that RWM planning and implementation is still rather top–down and technology-oriented instead of people-centred. Local processes are not in place to take account of different livelihood strategies and constraints, cultural, social or institutional dynamics as well as power relations and gender issues.

The research concludes with six recommendations, largely aimed at Ethiopian policymakers and implementing agencies, suggesting an alternative approach to RWM planning and implementation processes which would help improve the impact, sustainability and local ownership of interventions.

The paper outlines RWM strategies which are developed with true participation of farmers and other stakeholders; are based on evidence of what works and why; take into account specific socioeconomic and ecological niches; work across relevant sectors; and support local opportunities for innovation.

See the presentation:

Read the paper

See the full proceedings of the NBDC Science meeting

Read the the fifth paper from the Challenge Program for Water and Food ‘Research for Development’ series

This paper was first presented at the Nile Basin Development Challenge Science meeting. The NBDC Science meeting was held on 9 and 10 July 2013 at the ILRI-Ethiopia campus, with the objectives to exchange experiences and research results across NBDC scientists involved in the NBDC projects and to discuss challenges and possible solutions.

 

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