The overall objective of GALILEO is to rely on genuine Multi-Actor Approaches (MAA) to co-develop context-specific, people-centered agroforestry innovations in representative agro-pastoral, agroforestry, and agro-silvo-pastoral systems from Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The aim is to promote agroforestry as leverage to significantly improve agricultural, household, and climate change adaptation and mitigation performances and to enhance biodiversity in SSA. We build upon 8 agroforestry Living Labs (LLs: local scale and actors), 4 national and 1 regional Innovation Platforms (IPs), set up across 4 AU SSA countries. Our LLs are set in semi-arid zones of Senegal and Kenya and normally humid but drought-prone zones of Ghana and Cameroon thus comparing and covering a large range of SSA conditions. Through MMA, we co-construct potentially adoptable scenarios ex-ante with Innovator, Target, and Control actors in our LLs, then implement, assess, and compare performances in their pilot plots during the whole project. We use field observations also to calibrate process models, able to simulate under future CC scenarios. After full multi-criteria and trade-off analysis, we finally co-select the most effective scenarios ex-post. We thus rely on transdisciplinary research, providing qualitative and quantitative data on the biophysical, socio-economic, and environmental performances. Such adoptable agroforestry innovations will also enable farmers/pastoralists and stakeholders to diversify their incomes from new agroforestry value chains, of which 2 are GALILEO-original. They will also benefit from carbon farming and payment for ecosystem services opportunities. Through our IPs, we also engage in solid MAA collaborations and policy dialogues to first identify bottlenecks and second elaborate guidelines, and policy recommendations, helping towards strengthening their local innovation ecosystems, under a favorable institutional and policy framework.

The overall objective of SustainSAHEL is to enhance the resilience and intensification potential of smallholder agricultural farming systems to climate change through scalable innovations on crop-shrub-livestock (CSL) integration. SustainSAHEL aims to develop CSL systems through innovation platforms (IPs) in order to improve productivity and farmers’ income. We will assess adoption and scaling potential of improved CSL integration, while simultaneously optimizing proven technologies, improving herder-farmer cooperation, tackling socio-economic constraints for adoption and contributing to local economic revival. Our approach is embedded within the production systems of agro-ecology and organic agriculture, while comprising elements of conservation agriculture. Investigations on CSL, as well as soil quality and hydrology will be conducted through on-station and on-farm experiments and demonstration plots. We will identify drought resistant shrub teams that are in synchrony with livestock requirements, and reduced tillage options that enhances the soil water capture and holding capacity. At the regional level, landscape modelling scenarios will analyse the promoted systems’ resilience to climate change in West Africa. Dissemination activities will respond to the identified needs of youth and women and shall assure effective scaling of successfully tested innovations beyond the targeted regions. Systems approaches are a core concept of SustainSAHEL and reflect the linkage of biophysical, socio-economic, cultural and political realities. The project examines long-term economic support to local communities and improvement of agricultural practices through close cooperation with farmer organisations. Working closely with existing Africa-Europe networks and programs, the established partnerships will quickly evolve into a model laboratory on CSL for the Sahel and institutionalize science-based practices of sustainable intensification under challenging conditions.