Although many African plains are thinly populated (5 to 40 people/km), tropical
mountains are often overcrowded because rainfall and the climate is more healthy, the
production more diversified, the volcanic soils are more productive and the topographic
conditions provide some protection against various pressures. With the improvement of
the medical aid, the population density between 1000 to 2500 m of altitude has reached
exceptional levels in Rwanda and Burundi, which leads to dramatic problems of soil
degradation, runoff and erosion on steep cultivated slopes (up to 80%) (Humi and
Messerli, 1990).
As long as the population was scattered in the mountains, problems of soil degradation
and soil erosion were solved by long fallowing or migration and new land clearing.
After 1930, however, the population in Rwanda gathered on a few hillslopes and got
starvation and erosion problems. The colonial administration imposed perennial crops
(cassava and tea or coffee) and antierosive structures (infiltration ditches protected by
grasslines, mulching for coffee plantation and step terraces for tea plantation). The
‘colonial imposed strategy’ was poorly accepted by the farmers as it requires a lot of
labour for installation (100 to 350 labour days) and maintenance (20 to 50 days/year)
without increasing the crop yield. After independence (1962) these structures were
abandoned for that reason and soil degradation and erosion increased seriously.
Just before 1992, the problems got worse: the population doubles each 20 years and
exceeded 150 to 800 inhabitants/km2. Two thirds of cultivated grounds are acid,
exhausted but continuously cultivated because no ground remains for fallowing. The
average land available for a cultivating family was less than 0.8 ha in 1992.
It is too late to preserve the land. The productivity of the soil is already very low (400
to 800 kg/ha of beans, corn or sorghum, 1 to 3 t/ha of sweet potatoes or cassava): why
should one spend so much labour to protect the soil without significant increase of
production? The new objective must be clear: management of water, biomass and soil
fertility to double the production every 20 years (like the population), to improve the
farmers life level without damaging the rural environment. But in Rwanda, farmers are
so poor that mineral fertilizers are lacking, tillage is made by hoe and pesticides are
rarely available on time.
The new strategy (GCES; Roose et al., 1988) was first tested for 4 years on the acid
ferrallitic soil (ultisol) of a 23% hillslope to evaluate runoff and erosion risks and the
possibility to stop erosion losses by living hedges of 3 species of leguminous bushes and
to intensify the production by mulching the biomass produced by cuttings.