Dear friends and colleagues,
Webinar: Local government leadership in sanitation and hygiene: experiences and learnings
(English & French event – Le texte en français se trouve en bas)
West Africa's transition zone is one of the world's most ecologically fragile areas and is widely assumed to be experiencing a deforestation crisis. For a century experts have held villagers responsible. But recent research in Guinea shows the exact oppposite. Instead of disappearing, forest cover has in fact been increasing - due to farmers's skill in transforming savanna into forest. This video explains how the research team's anthropological research combined with oral histories, archives and aerial and satellite images to produce these findings.
This report discusses three agricultural devlopment projects in Africa, their participatory approaches and their implications at policy level. The analysis was carried out in the context of donor consultation on agricultural extension services in Africa and includes underlying principles of participation, methods to make participation work and ways for shaping conditions favourable for participation.
In 1991 the Guinean Fisheries department and staff based at Conakry of an FAO regional artisanal fisheries project carried out 'PRA port profiles' or participatory analyses with user groups of landing site problems and opportunities. Twelve of the landing sites involved in these PRA activities formed Land Site Development Committees which received support from FAO and became involved in activities to solve some of the problems identified, such as construction of breakwaters to protect anchored canoes.
The paper starts with a question - are women as a group poor in the Republic of Guinea? and uses evidence from both the household survey and PRA in answering the question. Existing data on consumption poverty obtained from household surveys are assessed in detail in an attempt to answer the above question. PRA methods, such as well-being ranking, group discussion, social mapping are used in assessing gender deprivation. Finally, the paper addresses the question of generalisability of PRA based assessment in the larger, national context.
This is a selection of letters and memos from FAO offices sent in reply to an IDS request for information on the use of PRA in policy research. Most replies indicate little such application of PRA. the last letter, however, concerns the use of PRA in a fisheries programme in Guinea. 45 fisheries department staff were trained in PRA. This resulted in a series of reports, prepared by national staff without requiring any further outside assistance, being one of the reasons why the reports seem to have had an impact on policy decisions at the ministry level.