**1. Introduction**

Rwanda, the country of thousand hills, has a small coverage area of 26,338 km2 with the highest (rural) population of 12 million inhabitants (416 habitants per km2 ), among African countries. More than 80% of population depends on agriculture sector which is dominated by subsistence farming at average farm size of 0.5 hectare [1].

Over the last two decades, the Government has experienced tremendous and steady rates of economic growth nationwide averaging 5.7% in 2019 [2]. While this sector contributes approximately to about 27% of the national GDP and 68% of the labor force [1], there is an intense pressure on degradation of natural resources especially land and water, by occupying marginal and non-protected lands. Thus, agriculture is still affected by low productivity due to several factors. Among others, Rwandan biophysical environment is dominantly characterized by steep slopes accentuated from Eastern to Western facings, and this mountainous topography exposes soil to water erosion risks, especially in the Highlands of Nothern and Western parts of Rwanda. Particularly, erosion risk is chiefly associated with slope ranges from 5 to 55% on arable land (about 48% of the total area) [3–5].

The combination of soil erosion, climate change condition, poor soil fertility and inappropriate steepland managements have aggravated such low productivity levels. In addition, intensive farming activities resulted into pollution, lowland siltation, soil nutrient depletion and soil acidity [6–8]. The acidic soils cover about 50% of national land area [9, 10]. Recently, climate change conditions have also to harmonize style and droughts reduced the performance of agriculture production system, resulting from to rainfall differences as affected by El Niño - Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events (El Niño and La Niña) [11–13]. This renders small-scale, subsistence, rain-fed farming vulnerable and leads to more advanced land degradation problems.

In the framework of finding appropriate solutions to combat land degradation problems, the country sets up a conducive environment with strategic policy tools since the past 20 years such as Vision 2020, Strategic Plan for Agriculture Transformation (PSTA I, II, III, IV). Recently, National Strategy for Agriculture Transformation (NST1) (2017–2024) and its Forth Strategic Plan for Agriculture and Transformation (PSTA4, 2018–2024) identified increasing productivity and resilience through sustainable land management approach as one of the priority areas in the economic development. Different actions from policy and development aspects had been invested in soil erosion control systems using a wide range of erosion control measures chiefly terraces, towards sustainable environment protection and agricultural transformation pathways. Intensive erosion control interventions confronted with different approaches bringing both on-site and off-site impacts [14, 15]. They adopted either different ways such as participatory landscape management or (Participatory) integrated watershed management. Thirdly, none of them was adopted to establish soil erosion control techniques.

Therefore, this chapter intends to describe and evaluate the impacts of different approaches used in erosion control systems in Rwanda in order to retrieve the success lessons, but also pinpoint challenges of each approach used. The chapter is practically assessing land husbandry interventions undertaken in two government projects namely Gishwati Water and Land Management (GWLM), and Land, Water-harvesting and Hillside-irrigation (LWH) for gaining understandings of the success or issues to be considered in the future interventions in the country as well as in other areas with similar landscape conditions. From lesson learnt, the chapter intended to recommend the best and comprehensive technical strategies aligning to land husbandry in rural farming systems for improving sustainable landscape management and optimize land's productivity.

*Erosion Control Success Stories and Challenges in the Context of Sustainable Landscape… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.96267*
