Soil erosion control training, Laikipia area, western Kenya.

Feb 3, 2025 | Project Stories, Soil Erosion Control

Soil erosion is unfortunately a typical problem in the savanna regions of Africa. During September 2024 we assisted an international NGO (CABI) with interests in the biocontrol control of invasive alien plants and habitat restoration. Our efforts at the control of soil erosion in the Miombo woodlands of northern Malawi were noticed by CABI who requested that we help the rural Masai pastoralists deal with their historical soil erosion problem.

The Masai are not people who do much digging, preferring to build on their livelihoods and wealth by breeding and herding livestock. This was a challenge because a great deal of our solutions to soil erosion control involve digging in the ground. This turned out to be no problem at all. The men and women proved to be clandestine diggers of note and happily mined the bare dry soil to our instruction.

We introduced ponding, hollows dug in the ground that collect the precious rainwater, and contour berms, basically trenches across the slope that arrest water flow. All of this is aimed at rehydrating the soil and encouraging a protective grass cover. We also demonstrated the reshaping of erosion gullys and stabilizing bare soil with brush-packing, of which there is more than enough to harvest in the area.

The demonstration site was small, all we could do in three days, but we stressed that these inexpensive methods could be implemented across the landscape at only the cost of effort and commitment to a long-term improvement across the landscape. Continuous grazing by goats, cattle and camels in the area will be a challenge for the grasses that may be encouraged to emerge by the rehydration efforts. The graziers will have to practice some sort of rotational grazing by means of herding but that’s another story altogether.

We were comfortably accommodated in a community run bush lodge situated on a river bank. The main point of discussion during evening beer time, while seated on the river bank, revolved around whether the river had dropped or risen in level since the previous day.