The International Center for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA) in collaboration with the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) organized a four-day regional training workshop on “Improved land and water management practices and use of simulation models for increasing agricultural production in Sub-Sahara Africa” in Kampala, Uganda, from 22 to 25 May 2023.
Funded by the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB),the workshop brought together 17 agricultural and water management experts and extension officers from Uganda, Mali, Senegal, and Togo.
The workshop was designed to equip the participants with skills and knowledge on improved land and water management practices. In particular, they learned about various best farming practices, including the use of soil-water-crop models for irrigation management, irrigation management for salinity control, and calculations of crop water requirements and irrigation schedules.
During the opening ceremony, Dr. Tarifa Alzaabi, Director General of ICBA, welcomed the participants and expressed her gratitude to the IsDB and the local partners for helping to organize the workshop. She noted that individual and institutional capacity development formed an integral part of the center’s work in Africa and other regions and ICBA was willing to expand collaboration with national agricultural research centers in developing the capacities of local researchers and other stakeholders in various areas related to agriculture, food security, and natural resource management.
In his opening remarks, H.E. Abdalla Hassan Al Shamsi, Ambassador of the UAE to Uganda, thanked the Government of Uganda, for hosting the workshop and noted that such capacity development efforts contributed to strengthening the existing solid partnership between Uganda and the UAE.
Dr. Issahaq Umar Iddrisu, Regional Head, Regional Hub in Kampala, the IsDB, said that the IsDB established ICBA in 1999 to lead research and development in biosaline agriculture as it recognized the importance of the agricultural sector. He also emphasized the importance of capacity development in agricultural research and practice and the fact that the workshop was held in Uganda, as the country is a long-time member of the bank and has received funding for projects to increase agricultural production and productivity.
In his opening statement, Prof. Patrick Okori, RUFORUM Executive Secretary, highlighted that Africa has over 60% of the world’s arable land. Yet, most of this land is becoming fragile because of over-exploitation. Africa’s agricultural productivity has dropped to the levels of the 1960s, but the population has more than tripled. Scientific solutions to increase productivity are more than necessary, and new tools and methods to generate knowledge for policymakers and practitioners are long overdue. Training programs that offer new skills for researchers to predict the future using tools and approaches like machine learning and artificial intelligence to guide decision-making are timely. RUFORUM, as a capacity-building organization for the next generation of researchers, is happy to collaborate with ICBA to deliver such training programs.
According to the participants, the workshop enabled them to gain additional skills in research in soil and water salinity management, as well as use of simulation models for irrigation management in Africa. One of the participants from Kyambogo University, Uganda, who is using irrigation for cropping, said: “The training provided me with an opportunity to learn how to calculate crop water requirements and irrigation schedules for different climate conditions using filed and global data sets.” Another participant from Institut d’Economie Rurale, Mali, noted: “Through this training, I gained new insights on methods of characterizing pedoclimatic data for use in models to predict and mitigate plant water requirements.”
The RUFORUM Blog 
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