[1] There has been a paucity of information on trends in daily climate and climate extremes, especially from developing countries. We report the results of the analysis of daily temperature (maximum and minimum) and precipitation data from 14 south and west African countries over the period 1961-2000. Data were subject to quality control and processing into indices of climate extremes for release to the global community. Temperature extremes show patterns consistent with warming over most of the regions analyzed, with a large proportion of stations showing statistically significant trends for all temperature indices. Over 1961 to 2000, the regionally averaged occurrence of extreme cold (fifth percentile) days and nights has decreased by À3.7 and À6.0 days/decade, respectively. Over the same period, the occurrence of extreme hot (95th percentile) days and nights has increased by 8.2 and 8.6 days/decade, respectively. The average duration of warm (cold) has increased (decreased) by 2.4 (0.5) days/decade and warm spells.Overall, it appears that the hot tails of the distributions of daily maximum temperature have changed more than the cold tails; for minimum temperatures, hot tails show greater changes in the NW of the region, while cold tails have changed more in the SE and east. The diurnal temperature range (DTR) does not exhibit a consistent trend across the region, with many neighboring stations showing opposite trends. However, the DTR shows consistent increases in a zone across Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, and Mozambique, coinciding with more rapid increases in maximum temperature than minimum temperature extremes. Most precipitation indices do not exhibit consistent or statistically significant trends across the region. Regionally averaged total precipitation has decreased but is not statistically significant. At the same time, there has been a statistically significant increase in regionally averaged daily rainfall intensity and dry spell duration. While the majority of stations also show increasing trends for these two indices, only a few of these are statistically significant. There are increasing trends in regionally averaged rainfall on extreme precipitation days and in maximum annual 5-day and 1-day rainfall, but only trends for the latter are statistically significant.

Adaptation, Africa, Indigenous knowledge, Mitigation, Sahel, Sustainable development,

This paper attempts some preliminary evaluation of the potential of agroforestry techniques as a forestry strategy for controlling atmospheric CO2—a critical greenhouse gas. The end‐use scenario that attempts to meet the wood and related needs of the nation while mitigating climate change was adopted. The net emission estimate for the Forestry Sector in 1990—the base year for the study—was 9.5 million tonnes of carbon (MtC). Based on this figure, projections into the year 2030 gave cumulative net emissions of 427.4 and 580.5 MtC at 1.3% and 2.6% deforestation rates respectively. However, mitigating with agroforestry techniques, assuming that about 76% of the estimated 39.5 million ha of farmland in the country is committed to a variety of agroforestry systems, the results show that a total of 1530 MtC can be withdrawn from the atmosphere by the year 2030. The paper concludes that there is a reasonable case for the use of agroforestry techniques in the country, both as a means of sustaining soil productivity and as a strategy for mitigating climate change.

Entrepreneurship is a tool for facilitating rural economic development, which is becoming increasingly needed to respond to the growing impacts of accelerating climate change on rural women's livelihoods in less developed countries creating constraints on sustainable development. This study examines the awareness of and impacts of climatic changes as perceived by women in South West Nigeria in diverse vegetation zones. It elicits the challenges facing women and which constrain their entrepreneurial activities. It therefore identifies potential adaptation strategies and opportunities, including drawing on a review of wider developments in at international development level, such as technological, institutional and infrastructural innovations. The study employed explorative, mixed approaches, including quantitative and qualitative methods. Five hundred and ninety-five questionnaires were administered to selected respondents through multi-stage sampling technique, while Focused Group Discussions (FGDs) were used to solicit qualitative data from two hundred and forty women. Quantitative data were analysed with SPSS for descriptive and analysis of variance, and Atlas ti. was used to thematically analyse qualitative data. Findings showed that women have high levels of awareness of changes in their climate. Analysis of variance revealed that most of the women involved in crop farming in the vegetation zones showed better understanding than women in other livelihood. They strongly agreed (with mean of approximately 5) that climate change had greatly affected soil fertility, caused less predictable, and prolonged the dry season. Over 90% of the women perceived significant impacts of these changes on their livelihood activities. Overall, there were no clear divergences in women's attitudes towards innovation and entrepreneurship between the vegetation zones and a relatively high expectation of government support. Wider review of current practice and innovations highlights a wide range of new opportunities for building women's adaptive capacity which could directly or indirectly catalyse increased entrepreneurship amongst women. Furthermore, the involvement of local authorities and community-based organisations, as well as diverse public and private actors, in the development of adaptation strategies is crucial to achieving this.

This paper examines the dynamics of organic matter and nutrients under planted fallows of Gliricidia sepium in South Western Nigeria, as an investigation into the behaviour of soils under such fallows. Data on soil characteristics were collected from thirty fallow fields ranging in age from one to eight years. The data sets were described using the descriptive statistics. Furthermore, the relationships between the soil properties and the age of fallow were evaluated with simple bivariate correlation analysis. Compared with published data and trends in natural fallow, the study shows that the progress of the planted fallow leads to greater organic matter build-up and increase in nitrate-nitrogen and potassium concentration in the soil. It also shows that the biomass retain greater amount of nutrients during the fallow.