Food security, one of the basic human rights, seems to be ever eluding the people of sub-Saharan Africa. With each occurrence of crop failure, agriculturalists around the world reawaken to the challenge of ensuring sta­ ble, adequate food production in the tropical African environments. The International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC), with its mandate of alleviating food shortages through judicial use of fertilizers, formulated a program to study fertilizer use strategies for sub-Saharan Africa. With gener­ ous financial assistance from the International Fund for Agricultural Devel­ opment (IFAD), IFDC, in collaboration with the International Crop Re­ search Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IIT A), initiated a research project aimed at assessing means to remedy soil nutrient deficiencies that constrain food production in the humid, subhumid, and semiarid tropics of Africa. The results of this project were summarized during a workshop held in Togo, March 25-28, 1985; the proceedings of that meetings are found in this vol­ ume. The project established collaboration with numerous national programs that were responsible for much of the data collection. The data presented in Chapters 6 and 9 include much of this information. We wish to acknowledge the contribution of the individual scientists, J.T. Ambe, F. Ganry, M. Gaoh, M. Issaka, J. Kiazolu, J. Kikafunde-Twine, K. Kpomblekou, F. Lompo, H.

Inhalt

Fertilizer problems and policies in sub-Saharan Africa.- Constraints to fertilizer use in sub-Saharan Africa.- Fertility of soils of tropical Africa: a historical perspective.- Cropping systems and soil fertility management in the humid and subhumid tropics with special reference to West Africa.- Biological nitrogen fixation and soil fertility maintenance.- Management of nitrogen fertilizers for tropical african soils.- Phosphate deposits of tropical sub-Saharan Africa.- Processing phosphate ores into fertilizers.- Reactions of phosphate with tropical african soils.- Agronomic evaluation of phosphate fertilizers in tropical Africa.- Economic evaluation of alternative fertilizer technologies for tropical african agriculture.