Social-ecological Transformation of Rural Africa

The increasing demands on rural areas in Africa for agriculture, biodiversity conservation, infrastructure development and energy lead to dynamic changes and challenges in land use, society, economy and politics. For instance, while some African countries are opting for agricultural intensification by concentrating crop production on areas with high potential and increasing the size of production units, other countries are opting for extensification of agriculture. The expansion of infrastructure for transport and energy or the establishment of conservation areas are also processes that have increased in some countries and decreased in others in this context. The effects of these processes on the well-being of humans and nature are being investigated by employees in various research projects and on different spatial and temporal scales.

This includes, for example, the Collaborative Research Center SFB 228 Future Rural Africa, in which quantitative and qualitative methods are used in various sub-projects to investigate how agricultural intensification, nature conservation and the expansion of infrastructure have developed in so-called development corridors in eastern and southern Africa and what effects these developments have on the rural population, the land use change and the protection of natural resources.