National Banana Research Program - Uganda

The programme aims to facilitate communication among small banana growers about improving soil management practices by developing a participatory communication strategy that includes:

• Instigating dialogue with specific groups of banana growers - women, families, and young adults - on the question of soil fertility;
• helping banana growers identify their problems and discuss potential solutions;
• identifying existing knowledge and increasing new knowledge needed to test those solutions;
• developing audio-visual and computer-based aids to facilitate the learning and exchange of knowledge;
• developing a strategy to extend the reach of those activities;
• evaluating the strategy; and
• testing the use of video to disseminate the process.

Agriculture, Environment, Nutrition, Technology.

Almost all the components of banana have some use in the daily life of a farming household, making its cultivation indispensable in Uganda. Moreover, banana is one of the most environmentally-friendly crops in that the tropical forest conditions provided by the plant's continuous growth and canopy slow soil erosion and preserve soil structure.

IDRC funds research that is geared to alleviating poverty and promoting sustainable and equitable development. It supports scientists and researchers in the South. Three broad areas define the scope of IDRC's programming. They are

• Social and economic equity;
• targeting poverty and economic vulnerability; and
• environment and natural resource management.

The PLaW programme was organised in response to the fact that, in Africa and the Middle East, soil and water resources endowment are extremely limited, and yet they are being rapidly depleted and degraded (partly by human activities). It is mainly marginalised people, especially women, who bear the brunt of this resource depletion. On a global basis, per capita food availability is lowest in this region, and per capita food production has consistently declined over the last ten years. According to the World Resources Institute, all of the countries in North Africa and most of those in the Middle East are water stressed.

Information from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Institute of Irrigation Management indicates that, globally, the gap between potential and actual water use for irrigation is greatest in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). Eighty-five percent of potentially available water remains untapped, and the cost of irrigation in SSA is three times higher than in Asia.

Given the weak state of national economies in the region, importation has not provided a viable alternative for tackling such a large food and water deficit problem. Most analysts agree that widespread land degradation and inefficient or inequitable use of water lie at the root of the problem. It is equally clear that increased food and water security through equitable, productive, and sustainable utilisation of land and water resources would provide a measure of relief, increasing the well-being of the poor and marginalised in the region. This is the targeted development challenge of Managing Natural Resources in Africa and Middle East (MNR-AME) initiative programme. MNR-AME insists that funded research projects recognise and address the human dimension of land and water management. To accommodate this dimension, researchers analyse how various groups of men and women are differentially affected by NRM approaches, determining how to help these groups benefit from the proposed solutions. MNR-AME puts a premium on research activities that target marginalised people by striving to:

• encourage researchers to pay particular attention to gender analysis;
• include gender specialists in research teams;
• welcome projects that, when appropriate, specifically address gender issues in the context of overall goal and objectives; and
• suggest that, as appropriate, gender considerations feature prominently in the definition of research design.

MNR-AME uses a variety of approaches to build research capacity, including workshops and conferences, short-term non-degree and graduate training programmes, internships, information sharing, and linkages and exchanges between strong and weaker researchers and institutions. MNR-AME also supports capacity building of community-based organisations such as women's groups and local NGOs.