"Population pressure in the lower plateaus has forced wild animals to their last refugesthe Albertine Rift and the Kagera Basinover the past 30 years," Breman says. "Then commercial farmers started growing coffee and tea in the easily accessible areas, and poverty forced small farmers to clear land in the more difficult areas. War in the 1990s forced millions of refugees into the Great Lakes region."
Today, the region is generally peacefulbut with peace, pastoral farmers from Uganda and Tanzania are bringing in large cattle and goat herds to graze on the already-depleted soils.
"These factors all threaten the last relicts of extremely richbut fragileecosystems," Breman says. "We will help harmonize efforts to feed the growing population of the Great Lakes region, while preserving its rich biodiversity and the ecosystem."
Africa Fertilizer Summit
"Fertilizer use in sub-Saharan Africa is the world's lowest, averaging only 8 kilograms per hectare," IFDC's Amit Roy says. "Cereal yields in Africa have stagnated at about 1 ton per hectare for the past three decades, and per capita food production has decreased."
The largest and most comprehensive effort to address Africa's soil fertility crisisthe Africa Fertilizer Summitwas held June 9-13 in Abuja, Nigeria. Leading African and international policymakers and agricultural experts highlighted the significant challenges that African farmers face as a result of declining soil fertility, and the potential productivity gains from even modest fertilizer use.
Heads of state and governments of more than 40 African nations declared both mineral and organic fertilizers a "strategic commodity without borders"meaning that all cross-border taxes and tariffs should be liftedin the historic Abuja Declaration on Fertilizer for an African
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Contact: Thomas R. Hargrove
thargrove@ifdc.org
256-381-6600
IFDC
11-Dec-2006