Policy Gaps and Opportunities for Scaling Agroforestry in sub-Saharan Africa

Agroforestry is a key component of climate smart agriculture, with trees in agricultural lands providing significant contributions to both climate change mitigation and adaptation. Trees also play key roles in strengthening ecological resilience, whereas various tree products provide economic and nutritional benefits to rural households. The EU-funded Reversing Land Degradation in Africa by Scaling-Up Evergreen Agriculture (Regreening Africa, 2017-22) is an active intervention that deploys agroforestry for land restoration across eight African countries. It has an explicit policy objective to accelerate scaling up of land restoration through policy influencing. The target countries are Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, Mali, Niger, Ghana and Senegal. Based on mixed-methods research consisting of an intensive desk review, focus group discussions and key informant interviews, the comparative analysis conducted across the eight countries revealed four key findings.