Agroecological Knowledge Toolkit - Training in Adama, Ethiopia

Presenting the 'resources map' prepared by the farmers.

 
Asantewaa, Mathias and Alan, SUTROFOR 2nd year students currently at Bangor, attended a recent training course on the agroecological knowledge toolkit  at Adama, Ethiopia. We learned plenty on local ecological and managemet knowledge, field participatory rapid appraisal techniques, the AKT software, and of course, Ethiopian cuisine =). We were joined by professionals from Rwanda, Ethiopia, Kenya and the U.K., a great group ready to put this new tool into practice.

To learn more about this, check out the AKT website lead by a team of researchers from Bangor University. Here are some pictures from the the Ejersa Joro kebele were we 'learned by doing'. Cheers.

Storing teff straw under the protection of acacias and live fence euphorbias.

Trees need to be planted with heavy protection due to free-grazing livestock during the dry season.

Cow dung patties used as fuel; in a drylands agroecosystem, biomass is a precious resource.

Grazing dromedaries herded by another social group.

message from Anne-Grethe

Anne-Grethe asked me to post the following message to you. As the Head of the Erasmus Mundus Secretariat, she has worked hard to make SUTROFOR the great programme that it is, but to those of us that have known her personally, we thank her for being such a wonderfully warm, engaging and welcoming person. Good luck Anne-Grethe!

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Dear SUTROFOR Friends

As of March 2013,  I will take on a new position as Head of the International Office at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, Copenhagen University.

Since 2006,  I have worked with Erasmus Mundus students from all over the world – it has been a great job!  I have enjoyed getting to know all of you and following your adventures in Copenhagen, Bangor, Dresden, Padova and Montpellier.

I wish you all the best in your future lives. I am sure that the SUTROFOR  programme has given you not only an excellent education, but also a precious worldwide network of friends and very valuable intercultural  skills, that will prove helpful when entering the global job market.

I send you my warmest greetings!

Anne-Grethe

voilà Montpellier -an extension to the impression-

Phil recently wrote a comment to his previous post on Montpellier, and since it's kinda hidden somewhere in the blog, I thought I'd re-post it right here. Thanks again Phil, good news for those that are on track to Montpellier!


Hey,
here is an extension to this first and quite critical impression. The courses I had in the meantime are really quite the opposite of the ones before. They really seem to be in their comfort zone with social sciences here and the courses negotiation (for env. resources) and nature politics as well as some other social course, which I cant be bothered to look up right now, are really interesting and definitely new land for me. Here the limiting factor is unfortunately still the french language. Even though I understand the stuff theoretically it is still an effort to listen and it gets hard to concentrate after a while as the density of info is pretty high. We get interesting guest speakers as well and the only negative thing is that we still dont know any exam dates.
I just wanted to let you know that my perception of Montpellier changed a bit since I last reflected on it and that it might be quite a cool place to go if you want to go deeper into social science and social science theory and if your french is quite alright to begin with. I remind you that I did not speak a word before starting the course with the fild trip to french guyana...
Ciao
Phil