INTERFACES - Supporting Pathways to Sustainable Land Management in Africa

Keywords

food security, adaptation to climate change, environmental protection, social learning, gender, implementation research

Countries

The project spans all countries in Sub-Saharan Africa with a focus on West Africa

Summary

INTERFACES is an accompanying project that will support four BMBF-funded regional research and development (R&D) projects in their endeavor to drive change for sustainable land management in Sub-Saharan Africa. It will do so through impact-driven support activities which build on networking for the regional projects, science communication, social learning processes and capacity development, and by complementary transfer analyses that enable or facilitate the implementation as well as improve the relevance and outreach of the regional projects' research-based findings.

Key bottlenecks for better adoption of technical solutions or ideas for better land management include that the proposed solutions may not necessarily match the constraints or meet the priorities of the stakeholders who are supposed to use them, that there is resistance to change due to power structures, value systems, norms and institutions, or that it is unclear how to achieve the desired change because context-specific behavior change management concepts are missing. To achieve changes towards sustainable land management, a fundamental reorganization is needed across technological, economic, political, institutional and social factors, including paradigms, goals and values. Changes must be gender-responsive and socially inclusive, which means that implementation pathways for sustainable land management must be based on thorough gender and power analyses and lead to outcomes that benefit both women and men of different ethnicities, ages, classes, and income levels.

The outputs from INTERFACES are expected to include scientific and non-scientific publications, the promotion of transdisciplinary research and social learning approaches in order to produce research results that are relevant to practice, the strengthening of already existing networks on land management issues and linking them up with different African and international networks to further contribute to the implementation of the R&D results in the area of land management. Finally, INTERFACES will anchor implementation-oriented research in education and training.

Approach:
INTERFACES has four work areas that together strengthen the integration, coherence and reach of the regional projects with regard to sustainable land management:

  1. Knowledge synthesis through dialogues about future visions and theories of change for sustainable land management - together with the regional projects and actors from science, policy and practice,
  2. Support of innovation and implementation processes by identifying change strategies to bridge knowledge-behaviour gaps,
  3. Communication, networking and knowledge management and
  4. Education and capacity building, e.g. through the integration of teaching content into African and German graduate programs.

The methods and results of the regional projects find their way into the training of project partners and students with regard to the training of future "change agents".

Main Cooperation Partners

Main Funding Partners

Federal Ministry for Research and Education (BMBF)

Duration of the Project

01.10.2022 to 30.09.2026

Project Homepage
https://www.zef.de/interfaces
Team

Contact

Tina Beuchelt

Dr. Tina Beuchelt

Phone.:
+49-228-73-4922

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