The SSI research focuses on sub-Saharan Africa, where 95% of the total agricultural land use is used for rainfed agriculture. In the past, increases in crop production to keep pace with population growth were largely achieved through the expansion of cultivated area. But nowadays also ways of improving the productivity of already existing cropping systems should be considered to feed the fast growing population.

The identification and application of innovative technologies and management practices offer opportunities to increase both food and environmental security. Besides studying these innovations the effects of these innovations on watershed and river basin scales should also be explored.

In the light of the above the SSI project was initiated to investigate the adoption and adaptation of system innovations, the increases in production that result from the innovations as well as the impact on larger scales.

In 2003 an inception meeting was held to initiate the project and in 2004 the research started with support from the Dutch and Swedish government.

The ambition of the programme is to improve the livelihoods of rural people in semi-arid areas of Tanzania and South Africa through:

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  Analyzing hydrological, environmental and socio-economic consequences at watershed scale of up-scaling water system innovations in smallholder, predominantly rainfed agriculture.

• Developing methodologies and decision support tools for improved rainwater management and equitable sharing of water between upstream and downstream users and uses in nature and society.

• Advancing knowledge for improved eco-hydrological landscape management at field, watershed and basin scale with particular focus on systems interactions between water for food requirements in upgraded smallholder rainfed farming systems and water to sustain ecological functions and other societal needs.

So far the SSI research team have achieved to:

• Get more insight in the adoption process of interventions by local communities.

• Acquire extensive field data and analyze the collected data on on-farm water management practices and techniques, the inter-action between farming techniques and the surrounding ecosystems and the link with hydrological processes in the catchments.

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  Get more insight in the livelihood dependencies of the smallholder farmers and the institutional aspects in water management at local level basin level.

• Share the knowledge with the communities through demonstrations complemented by ongoing learning processes with the ‘Farmer Learning Groups’ in the two basins, which reveals a positive impact on farmers’ capacity to experiment, solve problems and adapt water system innovations.

The mulit-disciplinary research is carried out in two pilot catchments in Southern Africa, the Thukela in South Africa and the Pangani in Tanzania. The project adopts a participatory approach with

The research is carried out by seven PhD students, four Post Doc fellows and numerous MSc students. The programme not only aims to achieve excellence in scientific research but also deliver results that are of practical use to development planners to improve the livelihoods of rural communities.

For this reason a special Outreach component is added to the project to further promote the dissemination of the research findings across sub-Saharan Africa.

The seven PhD researchers are well on track with their research activities and have been supported by various MSc students. Three PhD students have finished their data collection in the field and are in the process of data analysis writing their thesis. They are expected to defend their work in 2008.

Two PostDocs have finished their work, while the two others recently started up their research activities, which will have a specific focus on integrating the research outcomes of the several PhD research within the SSI programme. With the integration of the research outcomes the aim is to address the overall objectives of the project.

The research team has published over 10 peer-reviewed papers and over 20 conference proceedings on the research findings. Some preliminary research outcomes are:

• On water resources and delivery: Field trials indicate that the main determinant of yield, when water is limiting, is the area of the catchment for rainwater harvesting. However, forced by poor yields farmers tend to expand cultivated areas thus reducing the ratio between runoff catchment to cultivated area, which again constrains crop yields.

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  On restoring ecological systems: Problems at field scale, for example surface crusting, reduced water holding capacity, and declining nutrient levels, limit the productivity of water and severely limit harvests. At larger scales, land degradation is caused by expansion of farming lands into marginal areas, deforestation and unsustainable grazing practices.

• On hydrologic processes: In the Potshini catchment in South Africa surface and groundwater systems are closely linked, whereby the base flow in rivers is coupled to this shallow groundwater. Technologies drawing water from either source will therefore have a direct effect on water flows out of the catchment. In the Makanya catchment in Tanzania the geology is more complex. Water use interventions upstream have more complex, and often only indirect, downstream impacts both in space and time.

• On livelihood dependency: In the Tanzania catchment people rely heavily on savings and the surrounding natural resources in times of drought. In South Africa, people have a substantially larger and more varied set of social support systems.

• On adoption of interventions: Adoption dynamics are very similar in both catchments, whereby those who possess greater biophysical, financial and social assets tend to adopt technological innovations more readily compared to resource-poor farmers.

• On outreach/ Knowledge sharing: Demonstrations, complemented by ongoing learning processes with the ‘Farmer Learning Groups’ in the two basins, reveal a positive impact on farmers’ capacity to experiment, solve problems and adapt water system innovations.

In 2008 the research and outreach activities will continue and the project team will look for funding possibilities to continue the research in a second phase of the project.