SLU news

Celebrating with tree planting

Published: 12 April 2022
Two persons plant a tree seedling in Kenya

Ingrid Öborn, Gert Nyberg and Ewa Wredle were lucky to visit University of Nairobi on the International Day of Forests, which meant that they were invited to plant 10 trees in the campus of the Faculty of Agriculture in Upper Kabete. The purpose of the trip was to visit the Drylands Transform (DT) partner institutions based in Kenya to get to know each other and to anchor Drylands Transform within these institutions.

The partners visited were University of Nairobi, Faculty of Agriculture; IGAD-ICPALD (Intergovernmental Authority on Development - Centre for Pastoral Areas and Livestock Development) and ICRAF – also known as World Agroforestry.

University of Nairobi visit

Together with the Kenyan Drylands Transform researchers and students, the team introduced the Drylands Transform project and the capacity development components to the Dean of the Agricultural Faculty and the Chairmen (Heads) of the Departments involved in DT (Department of Land Resource Management and Agricultural Technology; Department of Food Science, Nutrition & Technology, and Department of Agricultural Economics). The postdoc from University of Nairobi together with PhD and MSc students also introduced their work in more detail. Dr Stephen Mureithi from Department of Land Resource Management and Agricultural Technology is coordinating the project implementation in Kenya.

IGAD visit

At IGAD Ingrid and the team introduced the Drylands Transform project and learnt about the work of IGAD in the seven member countries in the Horn of Africa. The drylands experience and network of IGAD will be adding value to DT research and partnerships and support the dissemination of the research findings.

ICRAF visit

During the visit at ICRAF, Gert Nyberg and Ingrid Öborn gave a global hybrid seminar (both live and digital outreach) attended by around 100 participants that were showing a great interest to learn about the project and to develop links and synergies to other research and development activities in drylands.

Visiting other stakeholders as well

The team also met up with other stakeholders and potential collaborators such as Vi Agroforestry (a Swedish non-governmental development organisation) – working with farmers’ organisations, advising and training farmers in sustainable agricultural land management such as agroforestry that will now start to work in the drylands, and ICRISAT – the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, sharing our research interest in dryland agriculture.

In all, the visits were fruitful and inspiring for a continued good collaboration among actors in the dryland areas.

Facts:

Logotype for the project Drylands Transform

Drylands Transform

Drylands Transform is a 4-year research project funded by Formas that started up during the Covid-19 pandemic in October 2020. It includes an interdisciplinary research team representing SLU and seven other universities and international organisations from Sweden, Kenya and Uganda. 

Visit the website for Drylands Transform.