One of the strategies of N2Africa is to open new opportunities for poor farmers and vulnerable groups by working with other players in the legume value chain and get them aggregated and linked to markets. In Tanzania there are already field based farmer organizations emerging.

During the annual planning meeting we visited Jikuzeni Kware SACCOS /AMCOS (Hai District, Kilimanjaro region in Tanzania) ...

The N2Africa Master Plans are documents intended to foster a common approach across the five Core Countries. So far seven master plans have been developed. These are Agronomy, Dissemination, Monitoring & Evaluation and Data Management, Rhizobiology, Communication, Gender and Innovation platforms. The plans are designed to achieve the N2Africa Vision of Success and the objectives set out in the Research Framework of the approved project proposal. This means all Master Plans need to ensure timely delivery of the outputs and outcomes.

In the 2014 growing season, two digital data collection methods were explored in Ada’a and Damot Gale districts of Ethiopia. The first approach is using Google Nexus tablets by extension workers and research technicians to collect both agronomic and socio-economic data. The second approach is using SMS method in which farmers send information on agronomic practices using SMS (Crowdsourcing). ...

In August 2012, a group of Nigerian Youth Corp (NYSC) members, trained at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) Headquarters, Ibadan (Nigeria) established the IITA Agripreneurs (IYA) as an independent agribusiness enterprise involved in the production, processing and marketing that cuts across value chains of several crops as well as the production and marketing of vegetables and fish.

The IYA organized a training workshop on "Agribusiness, a Key to Productive Youth Engagement", last September. ...

Rwandans are among world’s top consumers of beans as it is a preferred legume across livelihood zones and wealth groups. This staple is considered as meat for the poor or a near complete food, mainly due to its nutritious nature: common beans contain proteins, resistant starch, dietary fiber, vitamins and minerals.

Although growing climbing beans involves tedious work, climbing types have the advantage of yielding three times more than bush beans. ...

Short stories about Jeff Ehlers as key note speaker on November 13^th in the CSIS conference and Comfort Ojo and colleague PhDs meeting Bill Gates and Dr Akinwunmi Adesina on November13^th and 14^th.

Photo: The Right Honourable Minister of Agriculture Dr Akinwunmi Adesina (right) with Wageningen University students (on the left Comfort Ojo)

NoduMax is a new legume inoculant for soyabean recently developed at the IITA Business Incubation Platform and the N2Africa Project. The inoculant contains >1 x 10⁹ Bradyrhizobium japonicum strain USDA 110 per g and is packaged in an alumino-laminate bag along with gum arabic adhesive and user instructions.

Photo: NoduMax team May 2014

During this conference the last day of the congress, I presented summary results of my two papers and posters on "Improving shelf life of legume inoculant in East Africa". And ‟Performance of Indigenous Rhizobia Strains on grain yield of two Promiscuous Varieties of Soyabean in South-Kivu soil". ...

Photo: During presentation and discussion with the audience chaired by Prof. Felix Dakora

At the end of September I attended the annual meeting of the CGIAR Consortium for Spatial Information (CSI). The meeting was supposed to be part of the African Agricultural GIS Week in Accra, Ghana but was relocated to ITC in Enschede due to Ebola fears.

The meeting provided an opportunity to show some of the spatial analysis work that we are conducting in N2Africa. I presented ...

N2Africa coordinator Fred Kanampiu visited N2Africa activities in DR Congo from October 6^th to 10^th, 2014.

This article tells about the highlights of his visit.

Photo: Agrodealer shop Pharmacie Lobiko Bukavu

Sierra Leone falls within the humid forest agro ecological zone. Based on meteorological data, type of vegetation, and length of growing period for crops under rain fed conditions, the country is divided into different agro climatic zones. As an incredibly versatile plant with different maturity groups, soyabean is adaptable to a wide range of climatic conditions. Date of planting exposes soyabean plants to environmental factors (water, temperature, relative humidity, and day length) ...

Cowpea is the second most important grain legume in Sierra Leone after groundnut. The grain is valued for its nutritive content and short cooking time, and also favoured by farmers because of its ability to maintain soil fertility through its ability to fix nitrogen. Despite the high potential for production, yields have been generally low. Total yield losses and crop failure may occur due to several factors including the use of local varieties by farmers, time of planting, low soil fertility and insect pests. ...

Photo: Maruca caterpillar on cowpea

Ken Giller attended a debate for a journalist collective (link in Dutch only) on October 9^th. Yael de Haan, teacher Crossmedial communication of the University of Applied Sciences of Utrecht, led a discussion about the added value of using multimedia as ways to reach specific target groups In the debate Ken Giller told why he made so many films for the N2Africa project. ...

Half November we uploaded a number of new training materials for Training of Trainers and Lead Farmers. Most of these were written by N2Africa together with the African Soil Health Consortium. Photos show two of the cover pages. The booklets can be downloaded from our website and via the separate links.

I was delighted to present a keynote address to roughly 250 budding young agricultural scientists at this international conference. Great to interact with such a talented group and we had lots of opportunities for photos! ...

Rechiatu Asei, Onawumi Olufisayo Adeyinka, Ken, Mavis Badu and Benedicta Essel (from left to right)