February 2024

As the INSA project enters its last year, it is a good moment to reflect on some of the achievements so far. To date, the project has allowed 47 people to participate in secondments between Europe and Africa, and held 2 successful workshops, bringing together scientists, students and stake-holders to share knowledge about the nitrogen cycle and nitrogen management in Africa. Les Petits Débrouillards Occitanie (APDOC) have successfully completed school interventions in 2 African countries, and trained 5 researchers in science facilitation.

Work achieved during INSA secondments has contributed to 7 publications (see below) as well as several important synthesis documents. The project is successfully connecting participants from the north and south, providing extensive capacity building opportunities, facilitating new collaborations and strengthening established partnerships. Over the last 3 years participants have gained expertise in overcoming administrative hurdles, paving the way for a busy and productive final year!

Recall that the objectives of the INSA project are to propose a synthesis of studies on nitrogen in Africa, and promote capacity building, skills strengthening and knowledge transfer between European and African experts on the topic of nitrogen in Africa. A project brief is available here together with a flyer about the project.

More than 12 secondees have been involved in the analysis of nitrogen compound concentrations and the calculation of wet and dry deposition, in the framework of the INDAAF network. As well as generating new data, work completed during these secondments facilitated a synthesis of all existing ground-based observations available from the African countries participating in this project, including data from West, Central, East and Southern Africa. This work has resulted in three scientific papers:  

• Bakayoko et al. (2021), Dominant contribution of nitrogen compounds in precipitation chemistry in the Lake Victoria catchment (East Africa), Environmental Research Letters. 
• Ossohou et al. (2023), Trends and seasonal variability in ammonia across major biomes in western and central Africa inferred from long-term series of ground-based and satellite measurements, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.
• Diaby et al. (2023), The chemical characteristics of rainwater and wet atmospheric deposition fluxes at two urban sites and one rural site in Côte d’Ivoire, Atmosphere.

Following the evaluation of nitrogen atmospheric deposition, the nitrogen critical load was estimated for a site in the Sahel, leading to the following publication: 

• Delon et al. (2022), Nitrogen budget and critical load determination at a Sahelian grazed grassland site, Nutrient Cycling in Agroecosystems. 

Thanks to the work completed by Yéolognisse Agbohessou as part of his PhD thesis, two papers have been published dealing with greenhouse gas emissions from silvo-pastoral systems in the Sahel:

• Agbohessou et al. (2023), To what extent are greenhouse-gas emissions offset by trees in a Sahelian silvopastoral system? Agriculture and Forest Meteorology.
• Agbohessou et al. (2023), Modelling CO2 and N2O emissions from soils in silvopastoral systems of the West-African Sahelian band, Biogeosciences.

The project has also seen more than half a dozen secondments addressing nitrogen flows in livestock and cropping systems. The main output from this work is the paper: 

• Rahimi et al. (2022), A shift from cattle to camel and goat farming can sustain milk production with lower inputs and emissions in north sub-Saharan Africa's drylands, Nature Food.

Forty people (15 women, 25 men) were seconded during 2023, including 6 technicians, 28 experienced or early career researchers and 6 PhD students.

You can read about some of the completed secondments by clicking on the links below.

Dates to remember:

• INSA final meeting, December 2024, France
• 31 January 2025 - completion of the INSA project