Conclusion and Reccomendations

The safety of the future of Eastern Africa will depend on its ability to conserve the factors that drives the peoples’ livelihood which include various economic activities. Top on the list is the agricultural activities that depends on the climatic conditions and the health of the soil surface in a given location. While Africa boasts of approximately 27 million hectares of arable land, most of this land has undergone degradation over the years due to various factors such as increased anthropogenic activities, which on the other hand increases the susceptibility of the African landmass to wind erosion. It is estimated that the region losses over 50 tons of soil per hectare every year resulting to loss of huge amount of nutrients in the top soil that plants depend on to flourish.

It is evident that soil degradation not only results in food production crisis, but also in increased droughts and famine, causing huge ecological and social imbalances. The effect of the natural calamities has led to decreased yields and increased level of poverty owing to the fact that a huge number of the African population, depends on agriculture as the backbone to their economic wellbeing. The ecological imbalance caused by soil degradation pans different climatic and ecological zones affecting different economic activities distributed across the humid, sub humid, semi- arid, and arid zones.

With the continuous degradation of the soil surface layer, the arid and semi-arid zones have progressively become drier over the years. This fragile arid and semi- arid zones, when subjected through degradation pressure, quickly lose their value and rapidly undergo desertification. Over the years’, desertification has affected communities in the range land areas practicing pastoralism as an economic activity, with continued loss of their animal health and quantity. The loss of this wealth has exposed these communities to poverty and aid dependencies affecting their overall quality of life. To curb the effect of soil degradation on the arid and semi-arid zones, proper control measures need to be put in place to control the rate of soil loss in the region. Sustainable land management need to be enforced through practicing activities such as: rest rotational grazing and deferred grazing that will help in giving recovery time to the initially grazed land.

The government is also mandated to formulate and finance policies and initiatives, among them having a proper rangeland inventory, to allow for sustainable monitoring using earth observation tools, which will support adequate rangeland vegetation management and restoration exercises. There exists concrete evidence on reduction of the susceptibility of land to erosion by introducing control measures such as irrigation activities in the affected regions. Increasing the irrigation areas increases the soil moisture content hence reducing the possibility of a soil particle to be degraded. Although conservation and recovery activities is a challenge especially in the desert regions such as the Sahara Desert, there have been numerous projects kick started in trying to reverse the effect of degradation in these particular regions. Examples of such activities include the monitoring of planted trees across the Sahara in trying to reintroduce the long lost glory of the Desert.

The semi humid regions in the Eastern African region have since undergone a lot of pressure from human and animal settlement. These regions represent the areas with the most favorable climatic conditions for agricultural practices. The continued degradation of these areas has threatened the resources on which African farmers and their families depend on for survival. Manifestation of degradation of these areas are evidenced in crop yields, formation of crust and deep gullies along the water ways among other indicators. These areas are also the most affected by the varying climatic conditions caused by climate change for instance, it is estimated that the semi humid areas in Africa are experiencing climatic variability of up to 20%, affecting the cultivation pattern, crop health and crop suitability farming.

The effect of soil degradation in these areas have exposed the population food insecurity, poverty and the pressure of participating in unsafe agricultural practices such as; cultivating the marginal lands and deforestation to make up for the already declining crop yield. To curb the continued impact of degradation in these areas, it is prudent that applicable policies are formulated and implemented in order to commence the process of recovery in places such as forest and the marginal lands, while encouraging the reduction of population pressure on the arable land in the Eastern Africa region. The advocating of SLM practices will not only recover vegetation, but also restore depleting natural resource in the region in a bid to easing the pressure on the arable lands.

Although most conservation measure have been propelled by individual countries over the years, there is growing need for transboundary collaborative conservation efforts that will wholistically transform regions starting from the source of the degradation phenomenon. Collaborative measures have proved to be effective in management of transboundary natural resources. This mode therefore can be implemented in managing and recovering degraded areas. In addition, more scientific research and development initiatives needs to be done in order to understand the current social-economic activities, and identify some of the emerging indicators to land degradation. The research will inform policies on the emerging sustainable conservation practices to be applied, backed up by credible information from the ground. With these measures put in place, we hope that there will be a progressive surge towards restoration of sustainable African land.