 Our research shows that land degradation is quite widespread in Africa. For example soil erosion is quite high and this leads to the loss of fertile and biologically active topsoil. But we must acknowledge of course that Africa is quite diverse and Africa contains many ecosystems. So if we focus on agricultural systems, many agricultural systems in Africa suffer from poor soil health and this results in low agricultural productivity. And one of the worrying trends that we're seeing in the data is that land degradation is further amplified by climate change. Is it more pronounced in some parts of the continent than others? Land degradation from our research is more pronounced in the drylands across Africa. So these are areas that receive very low amounts of rainfall. But isn't that perhaps to be expected then in an area where there's very low rainfall? Yes. So in the drylands they are more susceptible to land degradation if poorly managed. So drylands can be very resilient and are important ecosystems for livelihoods. But if they're poorly managed then they're more susceptible to degradation and this continuing loop, this spiral towards further degradation. So there are drylands across the continent, right? So what's the next level of concern? Which are the parts of the continent? And then tell us which ones are quite healthy and thriving? I'm not sure if we can divide the continent on healthy and unhealthy. I think the most important is that management of our ecosystems, management of our agricultural and rangeline systems, determine the health of the soil. So other areas where it's well maintained? Absolutely. So in places where farmers and pastoralists are conducting regenerative soil management practices, then they're able to produce diverse and nutritious crops. And this can happen anywhere. For example, even in the drylands in Kenya, if we have proper management and locally contextual management of the soil, then they can have a thriving farm. So how can you tell that it's a widespread problem then? There are estimates that over a quarter of Africa's land service is degraded, which is threatening the livelihoods and as I mentioned the food and nutrition security. And because land degradation is so context specific, can vary from farm to farm within communities, a key constraint to addressing this challenge of land degradation was understanding the key drivers or root causes of degradation because this requires large amounts of data and high volumes of soil samples. And how do you get that information? In the past, conventional soil laboratory methods were very expensive and time consuming and this greatly limited the number of samples that we could collect. Now, C4Ecraft has been co-developing this application of soil spectroscopy, which uses infrared light to analyze soil samples, which is cost effective, robust, and rapid. So this has completely revolutionized how we sample soil and conduct land and soil health assessments.