Optimizing land use in Gabon to promote food self-sufficiency

14 décembre 2021

The government of Gabon has established its National Investment Framework to  optimize land use and nationwide forest monitoring. With the support of the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI), UNDP is working with the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Fisheries, and Food to promote sustainable land use and to increase food production in Gabon.

UNDP’s CAFI-2 program supports the Agricultural Development Agency in Gabon (ADAG) by: 

  • providing technical support in constructing two soil analysis and GIS laboratories;

  • facilitating the regulation of the land tenure system and agriculture permit procedures for production areas;

The UNDP/ADAG partnership has also made it possible to recruit a dozen experts and field agents, including:

- An agricultural legal unit to facilitate the resolution of land tenure and agricultural license issues. To date, the legal unit has compiled an initial textual database on the topic of agricultural land tenure;

- Three experts, including 2 soil scientists and a GIS expert to conduct land use studies in Gabon. Each of the experts has developed a training manual for their team of assistants on techniques for collecting, preserving, and transporting soil samples, and processing data using GPS.

UNDP also donated to ADAG three vehicles to deploy their staff on the field, as well as office equipment, electronics and supplies to support the research for the duration of the project.