Including inland water bodies, Ghana covers 238,539 square kilometers and is located on the south central coast of West Africa. The country shares bor¬ders in the east with Togo, in the north with Burkina Faso, and in the west with Côte d’Ivoire. The topography of Ghana is mainly undulating, with most slopes less than 5 percent and many not exceeding 1 percent. The topography of the high rainforest is, however, mainly strongly rolling. The uplifted edges of the Voltarian basin give rise to narrow plateaus between 300 and 600 meters in elevation (Boateng 1998).

Populations of Legume Nodulating Bacteria (LNB) were assessed under glasshouse conditions in soils collected from selected landuse systems in Taita Taveta district, Kenya. The populations were estimated by the most-probable-number (MPN) plant infection technique using Macroptilium atropurpureum (DC.) Urban (siratro) as the trap plant. The LNB populations varied from 1.1 × 10 to 6.1 × 106 cells g-1 of soil. There was apparent landuse effect on abundance of LNB with maize-bean cropping system and shrubland giving high population estimates.

Short-term trends show that livestock production is becoming an increasingly important factor in regional development, possibly because of the combined effect of increasing the forages on offer and planting crops better adapted to the environmental and economic conditions of marginal areas and the decreasing interest of the State in expanding the agricultural frontier. Overall planning of land use should be improved, but to do so, a more detailed characterization and monitoring of deforestation are essential.

This chapter summarises the experience of a research project for developing and disseminating technologies for better management of Vertisols for improving productivity.

ILCA acknowledged the potential for increased animal agriculture in the subhumid zone of West Africa by establishing a research base at Kaduna in northern Nigeria. FulBe agropastoralists were selected at the target group because they own most of the cattle in the zone and cattle are the predominant livestock, at least in terms of biomass and traded products. After consultation with experts, farm surveys, and a simulation analysis, ILCA chose to focus the research on overcoming the dry-season nutrition constraint.