COMMUNITY AND STAKEHOLDERS WORKSHOP ON THE USE OF PROSOPIS JULIFORA (MEZQUITE) TO IMPROVE WELFARE OF COMMUNITIES IN THE ARID BARINGO COUNTY

Dr. Oscar Koech from the University of Nairobi (UoN), Department of Land Resource Management and Agricultural Technology (LARMAT) organized for a workshop under the project “Studying the Use of Mezquite to Improve Welfare of Communities in Arid and Semi-arid Zones of the World”. The project is funded by GCRF, Research England, as part of an Interdisciplinary Research Project Award 2019 led by Dr. Gonzalez Carranza as Principal investigator from the University of Nottingham, and Dr. Koech is the Co-PI from Kenya with partners from Mexico and Tanzania.  The projects long term ambition is to improve the welfare of less advantaged community groups in the drylands of developing countries, including Mexico, Kenya and Tanzania using Prosopis resource. This will be achieved through sharing of knowledge and technologies in the utilization and commercialization of the tree products. The project seeks to support efforts towards sustainable utilization of the Prosopis tree through sharing of traditional and indigenous knowledge from the project member states (Mexico, UK, Kenya and Tanzania). The workshop brought together the Tugen and Illchamus communities in the ASALs of Baringo County, Marigat sub-county. This workshop facilitated exchange of knowledge and ideas between the communities with the researchers.  One of the workshop outcome was identification of priority action research areas to develop strategies for sustainable management and utilization of prosopis in the three counties.