Based on the authors’ and contributors’ experience, West Africa is focused on to illustrate the ecological intensification to agricultural production in the broad sense. Examples from non-African tropical dryland areas worldwide are also discussed to illustrate the potential of agroecological engineering to sustainable land management and therefore to the fight against desertification.

Dominique Masse (Agronomy-Ecology, IRD), Jean-Luc Chotte (Soil Ecology – Microbial Diversity, IRD) and Eric Scopel (Ecological engineering, Cirad), coordinated this Dossier.

The French version is also available at september 2015.