National Agroforestry Strategy for The Gambia. 2022-2032.

This National Agroforestry Strategy, involving local community groups and representatives, local and national non-government organisations, farmer groups, research and academia institutions, representatives from regional and national governments, and development sector, gives a basic understanding of agroforestry, its evolution, potentials, and the related policies and strategies, in order to profit from a nature-based solution that can achieve multiple social, environmental, and economic benefits to the country, and therefore integrate different forms of agroforestry in different landscapes depending on the community preferences and on the contexts. In fact, due to the high vulnerability of the country to climatic factors, the increased rate of land degradation, a cross-cutting solution involving integrating trees and shrubs within the crops and pasture lands, has become urgent to improve farm level productivity and profitability, increase food security and enhance environmental protection. The Strategy is structured as follows: 1) Introduction, including: defining agroforestry, its evolution, and its potential for rural development; benefits and roles of agroforestry in The Gambia’s agriculture sector; pastoralism and agroforestry: the interdependencies. 2) Vision and Mission of the Strategy, including specific objectives and key principles guiding the strategy. 3) Current state of Policies, Strategies, Practices and potential markets for agroforestry products. 4) Enabling institutional context, including: capacity building, gender and social inclusion aspects of agroforestry. 5) Strategy implementation. 6) Monitoring, evaluation and reporting.
Concerning the specific objectives, the Strategy focuses on: the establishment of a policy and institutional basis for the wider promotion and adoption of agroforestry in The Gambia; the enhancement of coordination in agroforestry programmatic designs and implementation to promote institutional collaboration and technical backstopping; promotion of agroforestry knowledge creation, dissemination, adoption and monitoring for effective adoption of context-appropriate agroforestry practices at scale; adoption of investment mechanisms for agroforestry through wood and non-wood-based value chains promotion, including: multilateral environmental agreement, participatory forest management, protected areas, energy production through fuelwood; creation of an environment for inclusive participation of all stakeholders in agroforestry promotion and the associated value chains. The following key principles inspire the Strategy and its implementation: multi-institutional and multi-sectoral nature of agroforestry; agroforestry promotion should be context-specific; partnerships and collaborations play a fundamental role in promoting agroforestry; design and promotion of agroforestry should align with national priorities, commitments, local and gender needs; research and development on agroforestry suitability in the different contexts.
Concerning the benefits and roles of agroforestry in agricultural sector, the Strategy provides for: reducing surface water runoff and erosion, enhancement of food productivity through micro-climate regulation, and improvement of soil and nutrient quality; supporting livestock sector development, provision of feed and fodder to animals, income diversification to the farmers, and controlling erosion; food diversification and improvement of nutritional needs and health of households and communities; disaster risk reduction; creation of rural employment opportunity for farmers. The Strategy also focuses on the following challenges posed by climate change impacts: decrease in agricultural production highly dependent on rainfall; degradation of forest ecosystem; loss of biodiversity; deforestation; extraction of firewood and charcoal for energy use.