IMPLEMENTATION PROJECTS
A global collaboration for local action
FEFA supports research on conservation and development issues across a portfolio of projects that empower African citizens to drive and respond to global change.
Mpala Research Centre – Kenya
- Studying livestock–wildlife coexistence in a highly variable climate.
- Uses functional ecology and Global Grassy Group protocols to assess ecosystem responses during the extreme 2021–2022 drought.
- Provides new tools for adaptive grazing management in unfenced, mixed-use landscapes.
- Supports land managers in fenceless, mixed livestock-wildlife systems by offering more nuanced tools to evaluate grazing impact.
- Helps reframe cattle production and conservation strategies across Africa by promoting adaptive, data-driven land use approaches.
Partners: Karatina University, Mpala Research Centre
Ol’kirimatian and Shompole Conservancies – Kenya
- Co-investigates Maasai pastoral futures in adaptation and mitigation strategies under changing climatic, social, and economic conditions.
- Explores Maasai livestock management practices in building sustainable livestock systems and broader food systems transformation pathways.
- Adds to increasing socio-ecological systems research by engaging Maasai cosmologies on livestock systems and human-wildlife coexistence within the landscapes.
- Aims to better inform resilience thinking and land-use management by integrating indigenous Maasai governance principles, women-led institutions, and community stewardship.
Partners: South Rift Association of Landowners (SORALO), Beef Research Institute, Lale’enok Resource Centre and the University of Nairobi.
Mariri Niassa Special Reserve – Mozambique
- Studies honey hunting by Mbamba villagers who have a mutualism with the Greater Honey-Guide that helps them to find honey.
- Addresses concerns over fire and tree cutting linked to the practice.
- Finds that honey hunting fires can align with management burns and don’t threaten rare tree species.
- Shows the practice is ecologically sustainable and culturally significant.
- Supports community rights and reframes conservation narratives around traditional land use.
Partners: University of Cape Town, Niassa Carnivore Project, WCS
Kitulangh’alo Forest Reserve – Tanzania
- Investigates livestock grazing impacts on Miombo woodlands.
- Finds that grazing can aid tree regeneration by reducing grass biomass and wildfire risk.
- Studies effects of grazing on bee forage—key to Tanzania’s honey industry.
- Provides critical data to support evidence-based pastoralism policy, addressing a politically sensitive issue.
Partners: TAFORI, SEOSAW, Global Grassy Group
Tempué Highlands Water Tower – Angola
- “Feeding people while preserving peatlands”
- Explores how local communities can use fire and practice agriculture to support livelihoods while maintaining the peatlands and Miombo woodlands that feed the Okavango Basin.
- Part of Projecto Lisima, the project helps develop sustainable land use strategies to protect a vital water source for southern Africa.
Partners: WildBird Trust, ISPT, National Geographic
Shangani Ranch – Zimbabwe
- “Keeping grasslands productive – innovations for combating bush encroachment”
- Tackles bush encroachment in a flagship holistic grazing system by comparing costly mechanical methods with ecological solutions like fire and browsing animals.
- Aims to identify low-cost, effective strategies to restore semi-arid savannas and support sustainable livestock-wildlife coexistence.
Partners: OGRC, OPALS
Wits Rural Facility – South Africa
- Tackles bush encroachment in semi-arid savannas that reduces grazing value and disrupts ecosystem health.
- Test biochar production from cleared bush as a way to sequester carbon and generate carbon credits.
- Aims to show that carbon finance can fund bush clearing at scale—aligning ecological restoration with climate goals.
- Offers a scalable model for reconciling land management with carbon storage in degraded landscapes.
Partners: ReWild Capital, SAEON
Mwekera Forest Reserve – Zambia
- Hosts one of Africa’s longest-running fire experiments, crucial for understanding fire effects on vegetation.
- Recent work expands focus from trees to ground-layer biodiversity, revealing that fire regimes shape unique species compositions.
- Findings challenge one-size-fits-all fire policies, emphasizing the need for pyrodiversity to conserve full ecosystem diversity.
- Informs fire management strategies across Mozambique, Angola, and Tanzania.
Partners: Copperbelt University, Kitwe Herbarium, Global Grassy Group, Edinburgh University
Mono Transboundary Biosphere Reserve – Benin Republic-Togo
- Supports a mosaic of mangroves, savannas, lagoons, floodplains, and forests, many of which are sacred to the nearly 2 million people who make it their home.
- Primary activities include small-scale agriculture, pasture, forestry, and fishing.
- Explores the contribution of indigenous and local knowledge practices in sustaining marine ecosystems in the reserve,
- Aims to identify how desirable futures can be achieved in the context of rapidly expanding agriculture, overfishing, and mining.
Partners: University of Cape Coast – Ghana, Université d’Abomey-Calavi – Benin Republic, IPBES Focal point, Ministry of Living Environment and Sustainable Development – Benin Republic
Barotse Cultural Landscape – Zambia
- Explores preferable nature futures for biodiversity and climate governance.
- Illuminates the diverse worldviews and plural values held by the range of people involved in biodiversity and climate governance through a futures visioning workshop using the Nature Futures Framework.
Partners: Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change PhD Fellowship, African Foresight Network Working Paper Series Fellowship, Indaba Agricultural Policy Research Institute
Gwaai – Zimbabwe
- Long term tree plot data demonstrates that selective harvesting can accelerate the growth of trees by reducing competition and how the harvesting of non-preferred species for fuelwood/poles boosts stem growth supporting a circular bioeconomy.
- Aims to produce species-level growth rate estimates for the region, to be shared via an app for government, tree-planting companies, and restoration projects.
Partners: ZFC, SEOSAW