An early milestone since the creation of the START (the global SysTem for Analysis, Research and Training) was the November 1992 Niamey Conference on Global Change in Africa, a workshop that defined the basis for STRAT activities in Africa. Among the issues that emerged was reviewing relevant research and monitoring programs and available information on global change research issues important for Africa; identifying key thematic areas for collaborative research involving both natural and socio-economic sciences; and defining priorities for African participation in implementing research in these areas, including identification of impediments and recommending development of regional research networks through the START.

Subsequent to the Niamey conference START initiated several scoping workshops that identified the miombo, Kalahari and African rangelands as priority ecosystems for development of regional research networks in the Southern Africa. Similar workshops for West Africa identified issues of food security and water resources as priority themes for development of regional research networks. Since the START has systematically and consistently built and nurtured regional capacity in Africa. Human resources have been enhanced through START fellowships and grants, and institutional capabilities have been strengthened through the establishment of Pan-African START Secretariat (PASS), a Pan-African START regional committee (PACOM), and individual research nodes at various universities and regional institutions. Among the examples was the support for regular regional climate outlook for a, the IGBP’s PAGES project, focusing on paleo-climatology and paleo-ecology of east African lakes at the University of Nairobi. Through a dedicated effort START has become the primary and widely recognized framework for supporting global environmental change research in Africa.

The dedicated effort of START has contributed to: increased scientific understanding of global change in Africa and regional-global linkages in the earth systems; enhanced regional capacity in terms of human resources as reflected by the number of START fellows, visiting scientists and young scientists awardees and increased number of African researchers engaged in global change research networks and projects; an institutional structure comprising of PACOM, PASS and a distributed set of regional research networks and nodes; and development of an efficient and cost-effective non-governmental mechanism for funding global change research in Africa based on the peer-review process.

In Africa, most of the START activities are overseen by PASS. Until recently PASS was hosted by the University of Nairobi, Kenya. Currently the Pan African START Secretariat is housed at the Institute of Resource Assessment, University of Dar es Salaam. The Institute of Resource Assessment is a multidisciplinary and an interdisciplinary research organization within the University of Dar es Salaam, with long experience in global change research, particularly on issues of natural resources management, biodiversity conservation and climate change research. The Institute collaborates with a variety of national and international researchers in order to allow for cross-fertilization of ideas, knowledge and experiences. The Institute’s long experience in global change research made it one of the appropriate institutions to host PASS.

The Institute of Resource Assessment (IRA) of the University of Dar es Salaam is the successor of the former Bureau of Resource Assessment and Land Use Planning (BRALUP), which was established in 1967. The institute was established with the broad objective of focusing and addressing the whole question of sustainable development in line with environmental and policy changes that have taken place over time. Detailed information on IRA research activities could be obtained on the IRA Website.