Staff from SENRGy run a participatory research methods training course in the drylands of Kenya
As part of a longstanding collaborative agreement between Bangor University and the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF), Genevieve Lamond from the School of Environment, Natural Resources & Geography (SENRGy) recently co-led a two-week research methods training course with Anne Kuria, a researcher at ICRAF and current PhD student at Bangor University.
The training took place in Makueni county in Kenya and the diverse group of participants included two MSc students from SENRGy’s Sustainable Tropical Forestry Masters programme, researchers from ICRAF in Kenya, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Comoros, and extension staff from the Kenya Forest Service. The focus of the course was eliciting and analysing local knowledge using the Agroecological Knowledge Toolkit (AKT), a methodology and software developed at Bangor University, to better understand farmers’ knowledge about land degradation processes and restoration measures that can be taken in areas prone to heavy soil erosion.
The findings from the two week research study will be used to inform future activities under a project called “Restoration of degraded land for food security and poverty reduction in East Africa and the Sahel: taking successes in land restoration to scale” which is funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and European Union (EU).
One of the course participants said ‘What I enjoyed most about the course was the excellent facilitation, learning a new tool (AKT5), and a new approach to projects, i.e. going back to communities to give feedback which has never been done before in my research site, and strengthening and widening my network’.
“Two of our students are currently on attachment with ICRAF for their dissertation projects and were offered the opportunity to further develop their research skills by attending this training. It has been an invaluable learning experience for them as they’ve not only been exposed to research methods they were unfamiliar with before, they’ve also met and worked closely with professional researchers and extension staff in the fields of forestry, agroforestry and agriculture.” Genevieve Lamond, course facilitator and teaching associate in SENRGy.
Course participants holding a feedback session with farmers interviewed during the two weeks spent in Makueni County, Kenya. Photograph taken by Genevieve Lamond, June 2017.
Course participants with farmers after a feedback session on the last day of the AKT training. Photograph taken by Sylvester Muendo, June 2017. Dickson and Evans, our two MSc SUTROFOR students, on the far left.