SWEP : The Consortium for the Sustainable Development of Inland Valley Agro-ecosystems in Sub-Saharan Africa (IVC)  (Coordinator: Paul Kiepe)

Rationale

• Besides food insecurity and widespread poverty in SSA, environmental problems are becoming increasingly dramatic, differentiated by depletion and degradation of natural resources. However, a promising and largely unexploited land resource is the estimated 190 million ha of inland valleys. Depending on the country, only about 10-25% of these inland valley lowlands are currently used for agricultural production. Since its inception in 1993, the Inland Valley Consortium (IVC) has gained substantial experience in understanding and managing the inland valleys in WCA. Considerable progress has been made in documenting low-cost water management technologies and developing information systems and decision support tools for the exploitation of inland valleys.

Goal

• To improve the livelihood of rural communities through the adoption and use of sustainable technologies fulfilling the production potential of the inland valleys in SSA

Purpose

• To develop appropriate technologies helping farmers to profitably increase productivity of inland valleys, while conserving the environment and biodiversity

Outputs

• Productivity of inland valley agro-ecosystems increased

• Negative impacts affecting ecosystem services mitigated

• Repositories of past achievements and local innovations generated

The inland valley consortium is a collaborative effort of four CGIAR centers (WARDA, convening center), IITA, IWMI and WorldFish; four international organizations: CORAF, FAO, CIRAD, and Wageningen UR; and NARES in 12 countries: INRAB (Benin), INERA (Burkina Faso), IRAD (Cameroon), CNRA (Côte d’Ivoire), SARI and CRI (Ghana), IRAG (Guinea), IER (Mali), NCRI (Nigeria), LWDD (Sierra Leone), ISRA (Senegal), IRAT (Togo) and NARI (The Gambia).