The GreenGaDe (Greenhouse Gas Determination in West Africa’s Agricultural Landscapes) Kick-Off Workshop took place on 02. - 06. November, 2021 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. This event formally pronounced the commencement of each work package of the project designed to be conducted through collaboration between partner institutions in Germany (University of Potsdam, University of Kassel), Burkina Faso (University Joseph Ki-Zerbo (UJKZ), Institute for Environment and Agricultural Research (INERA), Ghana (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research - Forestry Research Institute of Ghana (CSIR-FORIG)), and Niger (University Abdou Moumouni (UAM)) .

The workshop featured invited speeches by the Minister of Environment, the President of UJKZ, the Directors of INERA and WASCAL (West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use), which followed the opening talks of the workshop organizer and project member, Prof. Oumarou Ouédraogo and project leader, Prof. Dr. Anja Linstädter, who also gave an overview about the work packages of the GreenGaDe project.

The workshop especially aspired to provide a platform for the PhD candidates in the project to present their individual thesis outlines and tasks and to put forward future project plans to the larger audience. Following each presentation, principal investigators and attendees engaged in interactive discussions and offered constructive comments on the contents of the presentation and future schedule of the project.

In addition, scheduled field trip were held during the last three days of the workshop. In the first day, participants visited the research sites comprising fallow, cropland, and forest land uses in Ouagadougou, where supervisors and senior scientists of the project demonstrated some of the protocols students are going to apply in their field sampling during their PhD work. In the following two days, participants visited an ongoing experimental site and a fascinating small ruminant GreenFeed research facility at INERA in Bobo Dioulasso, located 360 km southwest of Ouagadougou. Workshop attendees dropped by smallholder farms of cotton and rice, crop types whose carbon and nitrogen dynamics to be investigated in the current project. The next two annual workshops are scheduled to take place in Germany and Ghana.