IK Monitor Articles (7-2)

Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor, July 1999

Contents IK Monitor (7-2) | IKDM Homepage | Suggestions to: ikdm@nuffic.nl | © copyright Nuffic-CIRAN and contributors 1999.

Focus on: Indigenous Soil and Water Conservation Programme
Dynamics in IK: innovation in land husbandry in Ethiopia

The documentation of indigenous innovations in soil and water conservation is only a starting point: the next step is publicizing those innovations, communicating them to others, and making them accessible to cultivators in comparable situations elsewhere.

The programme Indigenous soil and water conservation (ISWC) is now in its second phase (for the first phase, see Reij et al. 1997). It focuses on local innovations as the starting point for the participatory development of technology, whereby researchers and development agents support innovative farmers in their efforts to improve their land-husbandry systems. One of the seven countries involved in ISWC II is Ethiopia, where the programme is being implemented in Tigray Region, an area of high plateaus and lowlands separated by steep slopes and escarpments. Crops are grown at elevations ranging from 1500 m to 2500 m, where the annual rainfall ranges from 300 mm to 900 mm, during a wet season lasting 3-4 months. Farms are between 0.2 and 1.5 ha in size. ISWC-Ethiopia is coordinated by Mekelle University College (MUC), which has close working relations with the Bureau for Agriculture and Natural Resources (BoANR), Mekelle Research Centre (MRC), and various non-governmental organizations and bilateral projects in Tigray.

Seeking local innovation
The initial thrust of ISWC-Ethiopia is to find innovative farmers who have experimented in land husbandry without support from extension services. Their innovations are entered into a database, and outstanding examples are highlighted in a newsletter in Tigrigna. The farmers are interviewed on Tigrigna radio, and colour posters are produced of their innovations. Training workshops for development agents were organized by ISWC-Ethiopia in early 1998 in different zones of Tigray. This brought to light further examples of innovations introduced by farmers. During the first set of workshops, the development agents were asked to seek out farmer innovators and to describe the innovations on the basis of a list of questions. The descriptions were added to the inventory; ideas with a wider interest were then selected for in-depth study. In follow-up workshops planned for this year, the development agents will be able to exchange experiences in identifying and encouraging farmer innovation in land husbandry. MUC staff members have visited selected innovators to discuss the reasons for their innovations, the advantages and disadvantages, what questions need further study, and how support can best be given to farmers, with a view to building on these innovations.
Here, we would like to give one example of an innovator and the new ideas he has developed without formal extension help. A second example will be given in the next issue of the Indigenous Knowledge and Development Monitor. This case was identified by Asfaha Zigta, and described in more detail with the help of Dereje Assefa.

Devil's tie able to withstand strong flows of water
Ato Yohannes Tesfay is in his mid-50s and lives in Alitena tabia (village area) on the escarpment descending from the plateau of Eastern Tigray. In Alitena, the annual rainfall is about 300 mm, falling mainly between mid-June and mid-August. He and his family (8 persons) live beside a river flowing with soil-laden water from the plateau, which empties into the Red Sea. In the 1960s, Ato Yohannes built a wall in one of its bends parallel to the riverbank, in order to divert some of the soil and water from the river. He saw this as a way of both creating land and irrigating it. In this riverside plot of about 800 m 2 , he grows fruit trees (mainly oranges), vegetables (mainly cabbage), and maize.
When Ato Yohannes first attempted to claim land from the river, he built his wall out of large flat stones laid on top of each other. But when the river flooded, the water lifted up the stones and washed them away. He tried again, and the same thing happened. Then he decided to try setting the stones upright. He found a rocky outcrop in the steep wall of the riverbank and used this as his starting point, placing a line of heavy flat stones upright, one right next to the other, alternating larger and smaller stones. He then wedged a second layer of vertical stones into the gaps between the first line of stones, until a small wall was built. He did this as an experiment, to see what the floodwater would do to the wall. He observed that the water flowed over the top of the stones, but did not dislodge them. Ato Yohannes had outwitted the river by using the force of its own water to press one stone against the other and, in effect, to 'tie them together'. This type of riverside wall became known locally as seytan madewa (devil's tie), after the complicated knot used to fasten the goatskin bag that holds precious gifts for an Irob bride.
The field protected by the devil's tie lies close to a major footpath leading to Endeli on the border with Eritrea. Over the years, many passing farmers saw what he had done, thought it was a good idea and tried it for themselves. If Ato Yohannes was in the field when people stopped to look, they sometimes asked him to explain his idea. The principles were obvious to local people already accustomed to using stones to catch soil and control water, so few explanations were needed.
Ato Yohannes created the devil's tie in the late 1960s. In the 1970s, an NGO started a development project based on the technologies and innovations of the Irob people. Ato Yohannes was given responsibility for supervising the building of footpaths, wells and checkdams around Alitena. When a large checkdam was built, he noticed that floodwater pouring over the top was beginning to undercut the dam. He suggested constructing a devil's tie to prevent this. At the point where the water hit the soil below the dam, large flat stones were pounded in upright, slanting towards the top of the dam. The stones broke the force of the descending water and dispersed it, so that some water remained in the field and the rest poured over the next checkdam lower down the valley.
Whenever Ato Yohannes supervised community teams working on checkdams, he advised them to build the devil's tie wherever a similar problem presented itself. Many of them started using the same technology for the smaller checkdams near their homes. People in neighbouring villages observed and copied this technology, and now the practice of placing stones in the devil's tie below dams and building riverside walls has spread throughout Irobland.

1: 1960s: silt traps like house walls

2: Early 1970s: silt traps with heavy topstones

3: Early 1970s: 'devil's tie' for riverside terraces

Drawing Irob innovation in dry-stone walling

Drawings by Ann Waters-Bayer with the help of Asfaha Zigta (adapted from Bruno Strebel)

Future development
The BoANR recently organized village-level workshops to bring together innovators and other farmers in order to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the new ideas. It would be difficult to overestimate the benefits which farmers gain from talking to others whose circumstances are similar and who have come up with good ideas. Development agencies are now identifying technologies in their own working areas which are of potential interest not only to other farmers in Tigray but also to those in other parts of Ethiopia and Africa. Researchers in Tigray are now validating farmer innovations that may be of wider interest. The next step will consist of seminars in which farmers and researchers discuss the innovations, and design joint experiments to further improve the technology.

Fetien Abay
ISWC Ethiopia Coordinator
Mekelle University College
P.O. Box 231, Mekelle
Tigray
Ethiopia
Tel.: +251-3-400 512.
Fax: +251-3-400 793.
E-mail: mekelle.university@telecom.net.et

Dr Mitiku Haile at address above

Ann Waters-Bayer
Advisor to ISWC Ethiopia
ETC
P.O. Box 64
3830 AB Leusden
The Netherlands

Reference
- Reij, C, I. Scoones and C. Toulmin (eds) (1996) Sustaining the soil: indigenous soil and water conservation in Africa. London: Earthscan.

In the next issue of the Monitor, 'Focus on' will feature a contribution by Dr Maria Corazon Y. Mendoza. Dr Mendoza has done research among resource-poor farmers in the Philippines and has come across an innovation similar to the devil's tie.