Learning outcomes and estimated learning time per module
Module 1 - Agroforestry in the Great Green Wall region: Introduction
Estimated learning time: 1 hour 30 mins
This opening module introduces agroforestry as a connected system of trees, crops, livestock, soil, water, and people, and explains why it matters for restoration, livelihoods, and resilience in the Great Green Wall region.
By the end of this module, you will be able to:
1. Explain what agroforestry means in practice and how trees, crops, livestock, soil, water, and people work together as one connected system.
2. Recognise agroforestry practices already present in Great Green Wall landscapes, such as field trees, windbreaks, live fences, homestead gardens, silvopasture, woodlots, and riverbank tree strips.
3. Describe why agroforestry matters for land, livelihoods, and climate resilience in dry and uncertain environments.
4. Use the ‘Right Tree, Right Place, Right Purpose’ idea to think through tree choices that fit local soils, rainfall, land uses, household needs, and seasonal realities.
5. Identify how different people value and use trees, and how these values shape decisions about which trees are kept, planted, pruned, protected, or cut.
6. Work with households, groups, or communities to develop practical agroforestry options by listening, walking the land, choosing small actions, planning management, testing, and adapting.
7. Spot common barriers to agroforestry adoption, such as grazing pressure, limited seedlings, labour demands, water scarcity, costs, weak markets, or restrictive rules, and suggest practical ways to address them.
8. Explain why successful agroforestry depends on more than planting trees, including clear rules, shared roles, visible benefits, local learning, and cooperation.
Module 2 - Agroforestry in practice
Estimated learning time: 1 hour 30 mins
Building on the introduction, this module helps you recognise what agroforestry looks like on the ground, how different systems vary across dryland contexts, and what trees do for farms and landscapes.
By the end of this module, you will be able to:
1. Recognise what agroforestry looks like in practice and explain why agroforestry is about actively managing trees with crops, livestock, or both, not simply having trees on the land.
2. Distinguish between key agroforestry systems in the Great Green Wall region, including agrosilvopastoral systems, silvopastoral systems, and homestead, garden, and community tree-based systems.
3. Use rainfall, land use, and livelihoods to understand where different agroforestry systems are likely to work, from drier pastoral areas to semi-arid parklands and more intensive homestead gardens.
4. Identify practical agroforestry practices used in dryland landscapes, such as FMNR, assisted natural regeneration, enrichment planting, biomass transfer, exclosures, live fences, windbreaks, and fodder banks.
5. Explain how trees support farms and landscapes, including by protecting soil, improving water infiltration, recycling nutrients, creating cooler microclimates, supporting biodiversity, and providing food, fodder, fuel, shade, and income.
6. Look beyond the visible products of trees and describe the hidden work trees do below ground as ‘soil engineers’ that strengthen soil structure, water movement, nutrient cycling, and long-term land productivity.
7. Recognise and manage common agroforestry trade-offs, such as shade versus crop yield, fast tree growth versus water use, and livestock benefits versus the protection of young trees and crops.
Module 3 - Adopting agroforestry together: Practical design and implementation with communities
Estimated learning time: 2 hours
After learning to recognise agroforestry systems, this module focuses on how to design them with communities, using participatory decision-making, context-sensitive tree selection, FMNR, and inclusive planning.
By the end of this module, you will be able to:
1. Explain why good agroforestry design starts with people’s real context, including their land, labour, priorities, livestock, rights, and local conditions.
2. Use the ‘Right Tree, Right Place, Right Purpose’ approach to guide tree decisions that fit local needs, ecological conditions, and practical realities.
3. Support households, groups, or communities through a participatory process for choosing tree species, from understanding needs and trade-offs to agreeing on a small mix of options.
4. Discuss the advantages and risks of native and introduced tree species, including short-term benefits, long-term restoration goals, water use, biodiversity, and invasiveness.
5. Identify when FMNR may be a good starting point, when tree planting may be needed, and how the two approaches can work together.
6. Plan agroforestry actions over time by combining early visible benefits with longer-term gains in soil health, restoration, resilience, and livelihoods.
7. Recognise how gender, labour, migration, land rights, tree tenure, and decision-making power shape agroforestry choices, benefits, and long-term care.
Module 4 - From seed to planting: Getting it right from the start
Estimated learning time: 1 hour and 20 mins
Once communities have chosen suitable tree options, this module follows the journey from seed source to planting material, showing how quality, handling, propagation, and local seed systems shape survival in the field.
By the end of this module, you will be able to:
1. Explain why good planting starts before trees reach the field, and how seed source, seed quality, handling, storage, and nursery practices affect survival and performance.
2. Ask practical questions to diagnose problems in seed and seedling systems, instead of assuming that poor results are caused only by the species, rainfall, or soil.
3. Identify what makes a good seed source, including healthy parent trees, suitable provenance, genetic diversity, careful collection, and clear records.
4. Describe how different types of seed need to be handled, stored, prepared, and tested so they remain viable and ready for sowing.
5. Compare different sources of planting material, including nursery seedlings, direct seeding, cuttings, grafts, wildlings, and natural regeneration, and decide which option is most realistic for a given context.
6. Recognise how seed and seedling systems are shaped by people, knowledge, trust, culture, gender, and local organisation, and how communities can strengthen these systems over time.
Module 5 - From planting to growth: Establishing and managing young trees
Estimated learning time: 1 hour and 30 mins
With good planting material ready, this module moves into the field and focuses on the critical first seasons, when timing, site preparation, protection, and early management determine whether young trees survive and grow.
By the end of this module, you will be able to:
1. Explain why the first one to two seasons are critical for young trees, and how water stress, grazing, fire, and poor site conditions can affect survival.
2. Assess whether conditions are ready for tree establishment by reading the landscape, checking soil moisture, planning timing, and preparing planting sites properly.
3. Apply practical steps for establishing trees through planting or FMNR, including careful seedling handling, correct planting, stem selection, pruning, and protection.
4. Plan protection measures that help young trees survive, including livestock management, firebreaks, moisture conservation, and agreements with land users.
5. Diagnose why young trees fail by observing patterns in survival, damage, site conditions, timing, and community management.
6. Support the early management of young and established trees through pruning, thinning, coppicing, pollarding, monitoring, replacing losses, and adapting practices over time.
Module 6 - How trees, soil, water, and livestock restore the land together
Estimated learning time: 1 hour and 15 mins
This module widens the view from individual trees to the wider land system, exploring how vegetation, soil, water, and grazing interact and how restoration measures can help them recover together.
By the end of this module, you will be able to:
1. Explain how trees, roots, organic matter, and soil life improve soil structure, water infiltration, moisture retention, and land restoration.
2. Describe how grazing can either support or damage restoration, depending on timing, intensity, movement, and how long vegetation has to recover.
3. Read the land for signs of runoff, crusting, erosion, compaction, bare soil, natural regeneration, and grazing pressure.
4. Choose suitable soil and water conservation measures, such as planting basins, half-moons, micro-catchments, mulch rings, stone lines, contour bunds, and grass strips, based on local conditions.
5. Explain why soil and water measures work best when they are reinforced by vegetation, ground cover, correct placement along contour lines, and regular maintenance.
6. Support communities to manage grazing as part of restoration, using seasonal resting, livestock corridors, agreed grazing rules, and recovery periods that allow soil, grasses, shrubs, and trees to regenerate.
Module 7 - Agroforestry-based livelihoods and value chains
Estimated learning time: 45 mins
After exploring how agroforestry restores land, this module turns to livelihoods and shows how tree products create value for households, local markets, wider value chains, and inclusive enterprise opportunities.
By the end of this module, you will be able to:
1. Recognise the different ways tree products create value, including household use, local trade, and regional or global value chains.
2. Explain how agroforestry supports livelihoods by diversifying food, income, fuel, medicine, and seasonal sources of support.
3. Describe how tree products move through value chains, where value is added or lost, and how producers can strengthen their position through better processing, storage, aggregation, and market information.
4. Support communities to explore realistic value chain opportunities by analysing products, actors, bottlenecks, market links, risks, and simple enterprise needs.
5. Promote inclusive value chains by recognising the roles, rights, and risks faced by women, youth, producer groups, and other actors as tree product markets grow.
Module 8 - Learning, adapting, and scaling what works
Estimated learning time: 45 mins
The final module brings the course together by focusing on how communities and facilitators track progress, learn from experience, adapt practices, and help successful ideas spread across landscapes.
By the end of this module, you will be able to:
1. Explain why monitoring in agroforestry is not only about reporting, but about understanding what is changing and improving practices over time.
2. Distinguish between activities, outputs, outcomes, and impact, and recognise why behaviour change is often the key link between project support and long-term restoration.
3. Choose simple, meaningful indicators that help communities track tree survival, land recovery, behaviour change, inclusion, and local governance.
4. Support communities to learn from both successes and challenges, reflect on what they observe, and adapt agroforestry practices as conditions change.
5. Describe how successful agroforestry ideas can spread through scaling out, scaling up, and scaling deep, and recognise your role in helping lessons from the field travel further.