In July 1999, ICRAF and Kenyan Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MoARD) initiated a collaborative project on  "Improving land management in the Lake Victoria Basin" with finance from Swedish International Development Agency (Sida). 

One of our main funders is NALEP;

National Agriculture and Livestock Extension Programme (NALEP), the extension arm of the Kenya Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development (MoALD).  We work closely with NALEP to refine extension tools approaches and to test promising techniques on agroforestry, water and land management with farmers. 

Description of problem

The Lake Victoria basin covers an area of

184,200 km² of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi and supports about 28 million of the poorest rural inhabitants in the world. Poverty rates in the basin are 50% or more, and are especially high in the lakeshore areas of Kenya, where the situation is further compounded by a high incidence of HIV/AIDS and water-borne diseases along waterways.

Lake Victoria is the world’s second largest fresh water lake and a main source of the River Nile.  Accelerated soil erosion and nutrient runoff, urban and industrial pollution and atmospheric deposition have induced rapid eutrophication (excessive nutrients in the lake), which has in turn led to prolific growth of the invasive water hyacinth .The presence

of the water hyacinth is a serious health threat to those who rely on the lake for their drinking water.

 

Phosphorus levels and algal concentrations have increased two to five times and prolonged periods of anoxia (lack of oxygen) in the lake bottom have become more common.

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The purpose of the project is to provide extension providers, policy makers and

researchers with information, methods, technologies and approaches for improving land productivity while enhancing local and regional environments in the Lake Victoria basin.

The objectives are :

  Assessing problems: Identify and evaluate land management ‘hot spots’ in

   the Lake Victoria basin and identify intervention points for preventing or  

   mitigating those hot spot.

 

  Designing options: Identify and evaluate technologies, institutional

   arrangements and policies for alleviating poverty while protecting the local 

   and regional environment of the Lake Victoria basin.

 

  Assessing impact: Quantify the actual and potential impacts of promising

   land management interventions on human welfare (food security, income, 

   gender equality) and the environment (soil quality, water quality and

   hydrologic function).

 

  Improve linkages with development partners: Enhance research and

   extension linkages for improved land management in the Lake Victoria basin.