Recherche
3 items
A Crop Model and Fuzzy Rule Based Approach for Optimizing Maize Planting Dates in Burkina Faso, West Africa
In sub-Saharan Africa, with its high rainfall variability and limited irrigation options, the crop planting date is a crucial tactical decision for farmers and therefore a major concern in agricultural decision making.
Mapping of Zones At Risk (ZAR) in west Africa by using NGI, VCI and SNDVI from the E-statuib
This work is carried out at the AGRHYMET Regional Centre (ARC)-CILSS as part of the African Monitoring of Environment for Sustainable Development (AMESD) project. The analysis protocol has been improved under the Monitoring of Environment for Security in Africa (MESA) project. The MESA Project has been designed on the achievements of AMESD; its overall objective is to provide African countries with access to Earth Observation data for environmental monitoring and sustainable development. The specific objective of this study is to develop an operational analysis protocol for vegetation monitoring in general and especially for crops and pastures. Three vegetation indices were used: Vegetation Condition Index (VCI), Normalized Growth Index (NGI) and Standardized Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (SNDVI). The analysis of these drought indices is based on taking into account the agro-climatic characteristics of the Sahelian region, the comparison of the NGI profile (per administrative unit) from year X (in progress) to the maximum NGI profiles, minimum and average of the time series data (1998 to year x-1) and evidence convergence. Six years of application of the method and validation actions carried out concluded that it is possible to determine the zones at risk (ZAR) in order to anticipate food crises.
Training module on conflict-sensitive journalism related to mobile livestock production systems in West Africa and the Sahel
Mobile livestock production systems have been facing a number of challenges over the past twenty years, including farmer-pastoralist conflicts and civil insecurity in West Africa and the Sahel. In recent decades, conflicts initially sparked by competition over natural resources have gradually evolved into struggles for control of land between socio-cultural groups, and politico-religious demands that have intensified the displacement of both animals and people. At the same time, we note that the media - print, radio and audiovisual - most often focus on pastoral issues, such as the management of land conflicts between farmers and herders, and access to transhumance corridors. Pastoralists and pastoral households are therefore most often described in terms of this general conception of pastoral farming as vulnerable to climatic, environmental, health and terrorist risks, and as inefficient in the context of agricultural modernisation policies. All in all, these observations lead us to conclude that pastoral livestock farming is a production system that is not only under-represented, but also little-known by the media in West Africa and the Sahel, who more often than not are content to relay current representations and official events about it.