Eastern and Southern Africa­Partnership Programme

Africa has been undergoing rapid growth since the start of the 21st century. In
Eastern and Southern Africa, for example, an abundance of natural resources is
fuelling economic gains. Nevertheless, many countries on the continent continue
to lag in terms of social development: one-third of the world’s poorest people live
in sub-Saharan Africa; seventy per cent of them live in rural areas and ­depend on
subsistence agriculture for food and livelihood. Human-induced ­degradation of
natural resources in Eastern and Southern Africa is progressing and is intimately
linked to the continuing impoverishment of large swathes of the rural population.
Many development programmes addressing these problems are still mainly oriented
towards sectoral approaches. Little effort is devoted to understanding or addressing
complex degradation processes and other development challenges, even though
this represents a precondition for comprehensive mitigation strategies.
In the 1980s and 90s, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC)
and the University of Bern’s Centre for Development and Environment (CDE)
­collaborated to meet this challenge: CDE carried out three major SDC mandates
in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Madagascar, focusing on partnership-based research and
transfer of research findings into reality. In the process, CDE obtained significant
expertise in sustainable land management and sustainable regional development,
built a large information base, and set up reliable institutional networks. This capi-
tal laid the foundation for the Eastern and Southern Africa Partnership Programme
(ESAPP), a programme SDC commissioned from CDE in 1999. One of the main
lessons learned from the three mandates was the need to combine requirement-­
driven conceptual reflections with local demand-driven development initiatives to
find sustainable solutions. This insight directly shaped ESAPP’s resulting structure
and approach.
ESAPP pursued a dual approach combining a concept-driven basic mandate with
demand-driven priority action projects. The former defines the programme’s strat-
egy and ensures that projects fit in a regional development landscape populated by
pre-existing initiatives. The latter flexibly responds to development requests from
partners and stakeholders, often bringing together proven ­approaches and exper-
imental designs. Thanks to this approach, ESAPP rapidly evolved into an efficient
and focused programme. Out of a broad range of partnerships between CDE and
partners in six countries in Eastern and Southern Africa (Eritrea, ­Ethiopia, Kenya,
Tanzania, Mozambique, and Madagascar), more than 300 sub-projects emerged.
Research communities are often accused of occupying ivory towers. This never
applied to ESAPP; moving results from the “laboratory” to the farm was a constant
preoccupation. Project ideas were developed bottom-up, translated into relevant
research questions geared towards identification and evaluation of potential solu-
tions, and operationalized as practice-oriented actions. Project elaboration took
place in research partnerships between institutions in the South and the North.
The partnerships mutually enhanced the cooperating institutions’ capacities, help-
ing provide innovative answers to core challenges facing Eastern and Southern
Africa.