BMGF GAIA

With an estimated 15% of all agricultural soils in Africa being affected, soil acidity is a major constraint to (current and future) crop production on the continent. As a response, several governments in East Africa - including Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Rwanda - have initiated strategic plans toward substantial public investments for the rehabilitation of acid soils. This has been accompanied by growing private investment - though still modest - from the lime industry. In order to maximize the return on rehabilitation investments, there is a need for further data-driven evaluation and targeting from 1) farmers, 2) private sector and 3) government perspectives. The project ‘Guiding Acid Soil Management Investments in Africa’ proposes to guide these investments using existing data (in particular, the new soils data from iSDA-Africa, along with data from other secondary data) along with project generated additional empirical data (based on current identified knowledge gaps), and by combining agronomy, economics, social science and business modeling in an integrated approach. Key outputs of this project will be national investment plans which will empower the target countries to leverage longer-term investments for acid soil management (from e.g., AfDB).