 Kreiting, alining, imprimending incentives. Incentives are reason for doing something. They provide the motivational reward for good performance in your job or for achieving excellence. Receiving a good return on an investment is an incentive to keep investing. Incentives can also be negative. For example, if you lose something, you value because you did not meet expectations. But positive rewards are more effective for motivating behavior. People have different interest and therefore respond to different incentives. For example, on a river, the people living upstream have different interest or incentives than those living downstream. A farmer investment to manage water more effectively on our field will have costs and benefits. If she pays high cost but receives only a few benefits, she will not be interested. However, downstream people may benefit more from her investment to reduce facilitation. Therefore, if a downstream people offer additional incentives to the upstream farmer, she may be more willing to invest. The Nile Basin Development Challenge started this issue of incentives. We tried to identify who benefits from better land and water management and what incentives are most important for the different people involved. We also held workshops with key stakeholders to better understand what incentives would work best for them. We consulted with farmers, development agents, water dye experts and administrators and regional experts and decision makers. Each group identified the constraints and problems they face and identified positive incentives that would encourage them to address these issues in their work. Our action research added more insights to these findings. Farmers must see the benefits that result from their investment in land and water management interventions. The benefits should be apparent to them within a short space of time. In addition to direct benefits such as higher productivity, farmers report that they appreciate having opportunities to share their experiences with others. Practical training can also be an incentive. Development agents identified a number of incentives that are important to them. This includes capacity development opportunities and public recognition for their good performance. If they are rewarded based on feedbacks from the farmers they serve, they will have more incentives to offer excellent service. Water dye experts and administrators also need positive incentives. Examples they mentioned include recruiting more experts as they are understaffed, having adequate resources such as budgets and vehicles, having opportunities to share experiences with other workers and public recognition for their performance. We also identified incentives that motivate regional experts and decision makers. This includes opportunities to collaborate with other stakeholders, regular professional development and access to new agricultural inputs, technologies and the results of research. Aligning incentives to achieve real outcomes is a basic management principle. It applies to everyone, from government officials to farmers. Appropriate incentives are critical for sustainable community-led implementation of land and water management practices. If you want farmers to adopt new technologies and practices, they must see the benefits or wars the investment they make. If we want development agents to be effective in supporting farmers' innovation, we must be sure that they have positive incentives to achieve this.