Improved land management for sustainable development: a proposed project that fully integrates the strengths of RELMA with the refreshed agenda of the World Agroforestry Centre, plan of operation and budget 2004-2006

History of Regional Sida Support to Land Management. In 1982, a Regional Soil and Water Conservation Unit (RSCU) was established within the Swedish Embassy in Nairobi with the chief purpose to dissemi-nate the positive experience of voluntary soil and water conservation among groups of farmers in Kenya to other countries in eastern and southern Africa. In 1998, when this task was regarded as largely fulfilled, the institutional mandate of the unit was significantly widened to address also food security, processing, marketing and rural livelihood issues while the name was nominally changed to Regional Land Management Unit—RELMA—and Eritrea added as a new client country. In 2003, an internal review found that for legal reasons it was no longer tenable to maintain a unit employing non-Sida staff within the embassy premises. After assessing different institutional options, it was decided to transform the former unit into a projec—Improved Land Management for Sustainable Development or RELMA-in-ICRAF—and agreed with the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in Nairobi to incorporate the RELMA activities into its research themes and regional programmes within a three-year transition period 2004–2006. It was expected that the integration into ICRAF would ensure permanence for some important RELMA initiated activities while ICRAF would be able to benefit from the former unit’s experience in preparing technical publications and its methodology for building capacity among its target clients.