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Proposed WLE research focus for the Volta/Niger Region
Part 1: Introduction
 WLE introductory statement which should be boiler plate text for all focal region (1 paragraph).
This will be produced by Andrew and Michael and would form a uniform opening statement.
Fig 1: Niger and Volta
basins (the catchment area
of the Niger basin in Algeria
is not hydrologically active).
Elevator pitch: A region exemplifying poverty driven demographic shifts where lack of opportunities
drive the rural male youth towards urban centers, resulting in multiple problems for natural resources
management across the rural-urban continuum. Authorities and donors are in need of decision support
for well-targeted high impact investment to alleviate poverty and support food production in rural areas,
as well as information on the impacts, costs and limitations of the current urbanization scenarios where
ecosystem services and poor households are under significant pressure. Among all CGIAR programs, WLE
is extremely well placed to address both inter-linked challenges bringing together a wealth of so far
isolated information and capacities across its range of partners and sub-programs.
Alternative Elevator Pitch: The region is one exemplified by a strong north/south socio-ecological
gradient. The program aims to restore and bolster opportunities for ecosystem services in the resource
poor north specifically increasing productive livelihood options for women and youth. It will also focus on
reducing degradation of natural capital in the rapidly developing south supporting development options
and decisions that improve livelihoods while ensuring food, water, energy and environmental security for
a rapidly growing urban population. This includes scenario analysis and decision support highlighting the
impacts, costs and limitations of urbanization scenarios to identify strategies that reduce the current
pressure being placed on ecosystem services and poor households. WLE will provide policy-makers and
development partners with decision support to target high impact transformative investments for
ensuring food security, livelihood opportunities, and environmental sustainability across the north/south
gradient.
Part 2: Key drivers of change/opportunities
Both basins are geographically and socially interlinked, have countries in common, and cut - especially in
Ghana and Nigeria - through several agro-ecological zones from humid to semi-arid areas. Along the
same transect biophysical and socio-economic conditions worsen towards the north with increasing land
degradation and risk of droughts and crop failure. Along this same gradient access to major markets,
infrastructure investments and general livelihood support decreases. This results in:
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a) a strong poverty gradient from south to north, which is accompanied by increasing tension
between crop and livestock based farming systems, different ethnic groups and religions.
b) a demographic shift from north to south with strong rural-urban migration patterns attracting
the younger male generation of rural farmers and resulting in one of the strongest urbanization
rates of the continent. With strong cross-border migration within the West African subregion,
e.g. more than 40% of the Greater Accra Region population are immigrants from other regions.
The result of these two interlinked phenomena are (i) very poor farming communities along the resource
poor regions of the upper part of the Niger and Volta basins, (ii) some of Africa’s largest urban
agglomerations, especially notable within Nigeria and along the Abidjan-Lagos corridor, and interrelated
(iii) a new distribution of poverty with projections that the majority of the subregion’s poor will soon live
in urban and peri-urban areas (UN-Habitat, 2010).
This demographic shift has a strong gender dimension as mostly the young male population is leaving
rural areas, while women’s workloads and responsibilities have increased. In addition, women’s already
limited access to assets such as land, water and livestock perilously restricts their ability to ensure the
wellbeing and survival of their families and themselves.
In urban and peri-urban areas, on the other hand, population growth has since long outpaced planning
especially in terms of drinking water, waste management and sanitation (ISSER, 2013). Moreover, to
serve the growing urban markets, farming systems in urban proximity are undergoing rapid
intensification, with widespread use of wastewater and agro-chemicals, and little consideration for
human and environmental health.
From a WLE perspective, we see in this context major NRM challenges which we summarize in three
overarching modules (possible WLE Volta-Niger Research areas/calls) with the following R4D led
questions of relevance, also beyond the region:
1. Can we better guide and target sustainable agricultural investments in the rural north in such a
way that farming remains attractive, so that farmers are recognized for the multiple ecosystem
services they provide, and so that farming fulfills its role in sustaining livelihoods, mitigating
poverty and feeding the region?
2. Can we guide decision makers to value and better manage the restoration of degraded lands or
ecosystem services in general, in the north, and reduce the pressure on ecosystem services in
the growing peri-urban landscapes of the south and south-east?
3. What policies and intervention decision would strengthen farming households affected by male
outmigration, including dealing with the high rates of illiteracy found in these areas?
Figure 2: High degree of land
degradation in both, Sahel and
urbanized areas (brown colour),
and female illiteracy (filled blue
spots) especially in the Islamic
Sahel.
Out of ten countries with lowest
literacy rates in the world, seven
are in West Africa.
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From the global perspective, the region is an example for demographic shifts where decision makers lack
the means to support people in rural areas while equally failing to support a sustainable urban
development to absorb those migrating, which results more in a geographical redistribution of poverty
than poverty alleviation. Ecosystems services, biodiversity and environmental health are under particular
pressure through urban growth. Our value proposition is that this pressing rural-urban dimension in NRM
research is currently not being addressed by any CRP or other large scale R4D effort. This includes novel
work not only considering the impact of urban expansion on ecosystems under different demographic
development scenarios, but more importantly decision support for (i) better investments in rural areas,
with a focus on gender disparities, and (ii) resource use planning and ecosystem service management in
urban proximity. The ultimate goal is to support for different demographic development scenarios the
ability of low income communities to adapt to environmental and economic variability, demographic
shifts, and long term changes, which is one of the CGIAR IDOs.
Part 3: Building on previous initiatives
WLE builds in the strong history of work in the region by CPWF and various WLE partners, including FAO.
The constellation of CGIAR centers and partners working jointly in the region continues to provide a
novel opportunity to address the outlined challenge areas using multidisciplinary and systems based
approaches that focus on the nexus between people, nature, and resilience:
1. Guiding investments into farming: Just one decade ago, most programs and projects worked at local
level, testing ‘best practices’ in sustainable land and water management on station or farm. Current
developments allow for up-scaling of results using geographical information systems where innovation
requirements demand both bio-physical and socio-economic information. This approach allows us to
target and prioritize innovations to particular socio-economic groups and geographical areas to reduce
the failure rate of conventional technology transfer. WLE can integrate and build here on several, so far
separate databases on soil, biodiversity, and water and soil conservation interventions and technologies:
a) the BMGF funded and IWMI-led AgWaterSolutions project with its GIS based and FAO-led
country investment assessments for 3-6 interventions in Burkina Faso and Ghana based on
hydrological, livelihood and market access data.
b) The CPWF/SEI developed GIS-based online decision support tool (TAGMI) for the same two
countries, which is assessing the likelihood of success for so far three interventions using
community based social and bio-physical factors.
c) the IWMI database on ‘scaling-up potential’ of existing agricultural water management (AWM)
and land and water conservation solutions.
d) the GIS database of ICRAF/CIAT on land health and soil fertility in Africa,
e) the data of the Sahel based ICRISAT GIS unit, like on operationalizing bio-economic decision
support tools to improve the livelihoods of Sahelian smallholder in Niger
f) the IFDC value chain management tool with GIS interface, funded by AGRA aiming at market
information e.g. through mobile phone-based mechanisms in West Africa.
g) the Bioversity SDC funded program and databases on improved seed systems to mitigate the
impacts of pests and diseases in Burking Faso.
An integration of these so far little related efforts in both basins could be a low-hanging fruit which could
be commissioned to a consortium of WLE partners with the task to a) align the databases, b) create an
open-access GIS interface, and c) increase the targeting and number of interventions covering crop and
livestock farming in e.g. four selected countries. Co-funding opportunities might come for example from
USAID’s JPC Strategy.
To move such a decision making tool into actual use and decision making, i.e. from output to outcome,
the tool has to go beyond ‘being online’. This requires partnerships for innovative communication
pathways and impact projections investors are looking for (see below).
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2. Guiding the management of ESS under demographic pressure:
This component can extrapolate studies of IWMI in Ghana on modeling different urban demand
scenarios on water allocations in the basin context, need for water storage, and related costs, and by
CPWF/IWMI on the safe but productive reuse of urban waste resources, in particular wastewater. The
experience of Bioversity and IFPRI in mapping, targeting and valuing ecosystem services will be a crucial
asset, next to the efforts of various partners in providing evidence-based solutions to feed a growing
population, while promoting long-term conservation of vital biodiversity and other ESS. A particular
hydrological research challenge will be the uncontrolled private groundwater abstraction in urban areas.
A key element to move from research to outcomes in the rural-urban interface would be multistakeholder platforms. WLE has significant experience in this field in the subregion, also in the peri-urban
interface, e.g. through IWMI’s RUAF and SWITCH projects. Research can feed information into these
platforms for informed decision making on required investments or institutional reform to improve
adequacy, reliability, efficiency and equity in land and water resources management across the interface.
3. Strengthen farming households affected by male outmigration:
WLE can look at a patchwork of gender initiatives across its partner centers which offer several entry
points for addressing this challenge, like IWMI’s RUAF project which supported female led households to
link to the value chain in peri-urban areas (Amarasinghe et al., 2013), or the analysis of gender
dimensions of the adoption of small-scale private irrigation technologies (Van Koppen et al., 2012).
Women are often overlooked during the development and dissemination of new technologies or
practices. Thus any decision support should recognize that the target group might be a largely female
household. As agriculture is key to women’s economic empowerment, women friendly innovations and
process of decision making, will be part of the supported interventions.
Part 4 &7: Key areas of interventions and related research questions
The expert group suggests to focus the efforts on four countries (Burkina Faso (part of both basins),
Niger, Ghana and Nigeria), which cover a large part of the Sahel as well as of the urbanizing South
ultimately with the aim of a regional analysis. Significant parts of the research would be modeling which
will allow us to produce outputs clearly beyond any local scale. For example, regional investment plans
and scenarios for different rural-urban water demands at catchment scale and the impact of socioecological context on sustaining environmental, rural and urban water needs. The inclusion of Ghana and
Burkina will allow a head start and is strategic to build on and expand the work done by the CPWF.
Fig 3: Three intervention areas suggested for the Volta-Niger basins
1. Guiding
investments
into farming
3. Strengthening
farming
households
affected by male
outmigration
2. Guiding the
management
of ESS under
demographic
pressure
Key research questions per area are:
1. Guiding investments into farming
 How best to target recommended interventions and innovations (technical, social, economic,
institutional) to improve their adoption and impact?
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

What are the beneficiary numbers and return on investment for each intervention?
What are the economics of scale in investing in the highest ranking interventions across the basins,
and what could be the negative tradeoffs?
2. Guiding the management of ecosystem services under demographic
pressure
 Which options exist, including ecosystem service based ones, for propoor rural-urban water allocations and food supply in the basin
context?
 How best to minimize the negative urban footprint on ecosystems
services and livelihoods and what are the costs of action versus nonaction?
 How much storage do urban households need and how best to
institutionalize rainwater harvesting and safe wastewater reuse?
 How long will the informal groundwater access still support urban
water demand and how to manage it sustainably?
3. Strengthening farming households affected by male outmigration


How best to support the new generation of female and male farmers
with opportunities and (e.g. entrepreneurial) skills and value chain
access to stay in rural farming?
How best to support woman in accessing information on value chain opportunities? How far does
gender specific analysis and intervention choices change the results analyzed under (1)?
Part 5: Outcomes/Impact pathways/target groups
The expected research outputs are easily accessible and understandable information for authorities and
donors to make better informed decisions with a clear understanding of the likely returns on investment.
The related outcomes are a) better targeted investments in interventions and innovations supporting
(rural) farming in both basins, b) better understanding of the consequences and costs of uncontrolled
urbanization in rural-urban planning, and c) investments in gender-specific needs and opportunities,
both in rural and rapidly urbanizing hotspots.
This can be quantified by the number of ministries, policy makers and donors citing or using the provided
information.
The overall impact pathway is based on tailoring information to the needs and expectations of the target
groups and the identification of the most appropriate agents/platforms to reach them. In detail:
To reach scale, the eventually suggested investment options (area 1) target first of all decision makers at
national level as well as donors supporting the region. Their decisions on smart investments will then
reach beneficiaries at community and household level. This implies two responsibilities: The DSS has to
be accessible and tailored to the expectations of the investors (e.g. bang for buck information), and be
pro-poor and gender sensitive. The planned online based tool with a geographic resolution at district
level will be a key step, but might still require innovative thinking to actually reach the target group.
As research area 2 targets the institutionally grey rural-urban corridor, changes can only be achieved
through multi-stakeholder platforms bridging between administrative silos and sectors. Feeding research
results, such as development scenarios and related costs into these platforms has been shown to have a
high probability of change. For area 3, the approach of targeting both gender will have the highest
probability of success. However, the right information pathways and change agents to reach out and
achieve impact beyond those identified for area 1 and 2 have still to be identified. This will be a key part
of the research.
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The proposed action will support all 5 IDOs adopted by WLE with higher shares in the following three,
and in particular in the last:



Increased and more equitable income from agricultural and natural resources management and
ecosystem services in rural and peri-urban areas
Women and marginalized groups have decision making power over and increased benefits
derived from agriculture and natural resources
Increased ability of low income communities to adapt to environmental and economic variability,
demographic shifts, shocks and long term changes
Part 6: R4D areas of work (could provide examples of different work packages)
To suggested research is directly feeding into investment programs and stakeholder platforms, and will
link from the start to these target groups to meet their expectations.
Part 8: Partnership strategies and key partners
For the different research tasks we will have several key research partners within WLE, incl. FAO, and
opportunities for all 5 SRPs and two working groups to join forces. External research partners will be e.g.
SEI, IFDC and WASCAL, as well as local universities, also for gender research.
Uptake pathways have been described under Part 5 above. Uptake partners will be peri-urban
stakeholder platforms (Ghana and Nigeria), and national decision makers and regional investors, such as
AfDB, IFAD, USAID, CIDA and ECOWAS. Several of these donors have strong gender programs which
should appreciate the here sketched area.
Annex: Who was involved
-
-
The presented CN is based on discussions at the Volta-Niger basin multi-stakeholder consultation
workshop organized by WLE in Accra and an extensive review of literature from both basins and the
region as well as expert interviews. The first draft was discussed at a WLE Science meeting in Amman
with representatives from WLE partners and SRPs and also considered first feedback from regional
representatives, and based on this input revised and transferred in the current format. The current
version has been compiled by Fabrice DeClerck, Nicoline de Haan, Martin van Brakel and Pay
Drechsel.
List of high-level individuals or organizations consulted. (in January)
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