Background
The Sida funded REFOREST Africa Programme produced 18 PhD graduates after 4 years of training (2021 to 2024) at Sokoine University of agriculture (SUA) in collaboration with five partner universities namely Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Eduardo Mondlane University (EMU), University of Rwanda (UR), Makerere University (MU) and Hawassa University (HU). The graduates are citizens of Mozambique, Rwanda Uganda, Ethiopia and Tanzania. They did their coursework at SUA in Tanzania followed by research in their home countries addressing forestry challenges of national, regional and international interests. The students were co-supervised by resource persons from SUA, SLU and home country universities. Their researches were based on three themes, namely:
- Commercial forestry and bio-economy – tree growing as business, tree improvement and silviculture, forest health and protection, forest products development, marketing, forest products value chains, sustainable forest management (SFM);
- Natural forests Management – Ecological and socio-economic aspects, biodiversity conservation, bio-energy, climate change, REDD+, Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES), forest land policy and ownership as well as forest-land-water relations; and
- Agroforestry, forest-agriculture interactions and synergies, and conflict management.
Upon completion of their studies each candidate prepared a Policy Brief based on their research results.
The briefs are concise, evidence-based documents that summarize research findings and propose options for consideration by policymakers. The briefs presented hereunder are translating research results into actionable recommendations. Hopefully, they will trigger effective dialogue among researchers, policy makers and actors in the fields of forestry and related disciplines leading to effective implementation of the recommendations. Note that whereas the briefs are focused on countries where the researches were undertaken, some recommendations may be applicable elsewhere in the region.
The briefs were reviewed by the REFOREST Programme Task Force before uploading to the website.
The policy briefs are presented by country in subsequent pages:
