               !" #$ %$ $ &’ " $ (’ CA2AFRICA: Conservation Agriculture in AFRICA: Analyzing and Foreseeing its Impact - Comprehending its Adoption Marc Corbeels 1 , Johannes Schuler 2 , Hycenth Tim Ndah 2 , Sandra Uthes 2 , Peter Zander 2 , Tom Apina 3 , Saidou Koala 4 , Bernard Triomphe 1 , Mohammed El Mourid 5 , Karim Traor´e 6 , Isaiah Nyagumbo 7 , Rachid Mrabet 8 , Eric Penot 1 , Helena Gomez-Macpherson 9 , Jan de Graaf 10 , Pablo Tittonell 1 1 Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement (CIRAD), France 2 Leibniz-Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), Institute of Socio-Economics, Germany 3 African Conservation Tillage Network, Kenya 4 Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility Institute of CIAT (TSBF-CIAT), Kenya 5 North Africa Regional Program (NARP) -ICARDA, Tunisia 6 INERA -CNRST, Burkina Faso 7 International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT), Zimbabwe 8 CRRA INRA, Morocco 9 Instituto de Agricultura Sostenible -CSIC, Spain 10 Wageningen University and Research Center (WUR), Land Degradation and Development Group, The Netherlands Introduction Conservation Agriculture (CA) is increasingly promoted in Africa as an alternative for coping with the need to increase food production on the basis of more sustainable farming practices. CA is specifically seen as a way to address the problems of soil degradation resulting from agricultural practices that deplete the organic matter and nutrient content of the soil. It aims at higher crop yields and lower production costs. Yet, success with adopting CA on farms in Africa has been limited (Kassam et al., 2009). The European Commission is funding a collaborative project, CA2Africa (www.CA2Africa.eu ), that seeks to better understand the reasons for the limited adoption of CA in Africa by analyzing past and on-going CA experiences, in order to assess under which conditions and to what extent CA can strengthen the socio-economic position of smallholder farmers in Africa. A better comprehension of where, when and for whom CA works best, and how CA should be configured in different settings will enable the identification of knowledge gaps for future research, development and promotion of CA in Africa. Methods The project brings together the major research players involved with CA in Africa to share, assess and learn together with multiple stakeholders from a number of case studies on CA (figure 1).