Project Inception Workshop Report: Establishing an ecosystem of soil data-driven services to meet the Global Fertiliser and Soil Health Challenge
In 2024, CIFOR-ICRAF and Varda Foundation piloted a soil knowledge exchange initiative in Kenya and Tanzania, funded by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD). The pilot focused on identifying barriers and opportunities for building a collaborative soil data ecosystem and directly shaped the project's design.
Building on the pilot initiative, CIFOR-ICRAF and the Varda Foundation, with support from NORAD, are now launching a new three-year initiative to create a dynamic ecosystem of soil data-driven services across Kenya, Ghana, Malawi, and Tanzania.
From 27 - 28 January 2026, the project consortium met at the CIFOR-ICRAF office in Nairobi for a project inception meeting.
The main objectives of the workshop were to:
Introduce the project, its goals, structure, and implementation plan.
Build a shared understanding of the current state of soil health knowledge, data availability, and information management in Ghana, Kenya, Malawi and Tanzania.
Identify and prioritise soil health data and information use cases for each of the four countries.
Strengthen collaboration among project partners and stakeholders to shape a shared vision.
Co-design next steps for the SoilHive platform
