Adoption of agroforestry systems by smallholders’ farmers in the Sudano-Sahelian zones of Mali and Burkina Faso, West Africa

Abstract Despite the well-known potential of agroforestry systems to sustain livelihoods and ecosystem services, their targeted adoption in the Sudano-Sahelian zone of West Africa is low. To address this, we used questionnaires with 279 farmers to understand their socio-economic characteristics determining the adoption of agroforestry technologies and to record the preferred tree species in the Koulikoro region of Mali and West-Central region of Burkina Faso. The result of a binary logistic regression showed that income, off farm activities, average number of owned sheep, cooperative membership, forage security, and maintained trees and shrubs fostered the adoption of agroforestry technologies. Contrarily, the adoption of agroforestry technologies was negatively influenced by household size and crop yield. Our data show that agroforestry parklands are the most popular agroforestry technology. The most common agroforestry tree species in the study region was Vitellaria paradoxa C. F. Gaertn. The dominance of V. paradoxa within these parklands may be partly explained by the tree’s adaptation to severe drought and fire hazards, which are common to the study region. The study also revealed that smallholder farmers in Mali maintained trees on farms mainly for food security, whereas in Burkina Faso trees were mainly kept for maintaining soil fertility. We conclude that in all initiatives aimed at promoting the adoption of agroforestry in the study region, efforts should be made to consider farmers’ socioeconomic characteristics, tree preferences, and perceptions (as identified in this study).