APOPO established extended training facilities in the proximity of the SUA campus in Tanzania. Some 28 ha of land were made available by Sokoine University, and the Tanzanian army donated over 1550 landmines and UXO of 14 different types.

In these experimental mine fields there are 1300 demarcated training boxes of 100m 2 , containing from 0 up to 4 mines of different types and a selection of 20 different types of dummy objects. 1m wide safe lanes separate boxes where both the trainer and the observer can walk. The positions of the mines are carefully mapped, and retractable colored poles are placed at the borders of the boxes. Mines were buried at different depths, ranging from surface laid to 20 cm below ground level. All mines were defused prior to their placement. These fields are used for the daily training and testing of the direct detection rats.

Vegetation in those boxes is kept short (<20cm height) by slashing on regular intervals and slashed plants are removed outside the plot.

At the Eastern side of the testing facility, a low density minefield was established, as a tool for the REST R&D. This field contains identical numbers and types of mines as the REST-field established by NPA in Angola. The field is laid out in grids of 40mx40m, divided in boxes of 5mx5m. The mines are placed central in the 40mx40 m squares, so that the minimum distance between to mines is 40 meters. These fields are used for producing both positive and neutral REST samples, used both for training purposes, as well as for research on the various factors influencing the quality of the REST samples.

At the main campus of Sokoine University, APOPO has its central office, training, research and kennel facilities.

APOPO houses about 300 rats, and has separate kennels for the breeding couples, the rats trained for direct detection and the rats trained for the REST application. The kennel also contains several outside pens, where the rats are regularly brought for their exercises.

APOPO has a variety of training cages, evaluation set-ups and shaded training grounds, to perform both the different pre-training stages, as well as the evaluation of REST samples. Key to the research are the laboratory facilities for the preparation of training samples and research on the landmine explosive vapour dynamics.