Letting the piper call the tune: Experimenting with different forestry extension methods in the northern Sudan

This paper is excerpted from a doctoral thesis entitled Innovation, User Participation and Forest Energy Development, completed at the Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex in December 1986.

This paper presents examples of the outcome of some of the grants made by the Energy Council (ERC) and, within it, the Government of Sudan/USAID sponsored Sudan Renewable Energy Project (SREP), examining the impact of institutional innovations upon social forestry development. The examples date from the period 1982 to 1985, while the writer was working with SREP. The Sudan experience demonstrates that people's participation in the design and administration of forestry projects is an important component of project success. Moreover, the most remote, poorest communities tend to have the greatest resources of organisation and enthusiasm to bring to forestry, and produces the best results when given maximum resopnsibility for project development and management. This is contrary to the way in which most social forestry is performed, in which poorer people have less direct access to and control over project planning and facilities. (author)