International Council for Research in Agroforestry: Annual Report, 1989

In my introduction to ICRAF's 1988 An-nual Report, I predicted that 1989 would not be a 'normal' year. This certainly turned out to be an understatement. Indeed, 1989 was full of unusual and important events, many of which will have far-reaching repercus-sions for ICRAF well into the 1990s. Prob-ably the most outstanding feature of 1989 at ICRAF, however, was the remarkable level of progress and productivity that the staff managed to achieve in spite of the unpre-cedented number of demands on time and resources. This introduction will begin with a brief description of some of these achieve-ments. In various statements in recent ycars, ICRAF has heralded an imminent 'explo-sion' of information on agroforestry result-ing from the large number of research and development projects initiated by many or-ganizations in the 1980s. Since 1986, ICRAF has been involved in collaborative research through :The Agroforestry Research Networks for Africa (AFRENA) programmes, aimed at generating agroforestry technologies appropriate for the region. In 1989, results-concrete research results based on field experimentation and sur-veys-started to emerge from several of these programunes.