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The use of co-investment activities to motivate farmers to carry out sustainable land management is increasingly recognized. Several co-investment efforts have been implemented to combat land degradation and increase agricultural production in the Ethiopian highlands. Nevertheless, these co-investment activities have not been documented. Moreover, the impacts of these activities have not been evaluated. This study presents a co-investment initiative for sustainable land management in the Galessa watershed in Ethiopia. It documents successful co-investment activities that trigger farmers to carry out land management practices, and assesses the impact of these activities on farmers’ land management investments. The most important co-investment activities that trigger farmers to invest in land management are co-investments in awareness creation, water provision, technology, and governance. Of these activities, co-investing in water provision is most successful, because it directly solves one of the basic needs of farmers in the watershed. Results reveal that the experimental group of farmers (participants in the co-investment initiative) – compared to the control group (nonparticipants) – invested significantly more in land management practices such as soil bunds, composting, and tree planting. This article concludes that use of multiple co-investment activities are crucial to trigger farmers to invest in land management in Ethiopia.

In semi-arid Sahel, soil erosion by water is one major factor accounting for negative nutrient balances in agricultural systems. A field experiment was conducted on a Ferric Lixisol in Burkina Faso to assess the effects of soil and water conservation barriers (stone rows or grass strips of Andropogon gayanus), the sole use of organic (compost) or mineral (urea) source of nitrogen (N), and the combined use of barriers and compost or urea nitrogen on soil nutrient and sediment erosion. The run-off barriers were put along contours. Organic carbon (OC) and nutrients losses through run-off and sediments were monitored during 2001 and 2002. Carbon and nutrient concentrations of generated sediments were very high, of 14-29 g kg-1 OC, 1.0-3.7 g kg-1 N and 0.32-0.71 g kg-1 total P. concentration in run-off water reached 0.023 g L-1 in stone rows treatments compared to only 0.002 g L-1 with treatments without barriers. Annual losses of organic C, N, P, and K were high and greatly dependant on soil loss magnitude. Compared to the control plots, soil losses were reduced on average by 84% during the 2 years with stone rows treatments, while by 71% with grass strips treatments. Compost application reduced soil loss by 75% in plots without barriers and by 89% in plots with stone rows as compared to control plots. With urea application, soil loss was on average 13% lower than in plots with compost. Integrated water and nutrient management can effectively alleviate soil, carbon, and nutrients losses by water erosion, therefore may contribute to intensifying crop production in Sahelian smallholder farming.