A Golden Anniversary for the N2Africa Podcaster – the 50th Edition! To celebrate we decided to ask for N2Africa staff to select one past article that for them exemplified the N2Africa approach or highlighted a particular key learning. As you read through I think you will agree it is a rich harvest that demonstrates the scientific excitement and the amazingly broad reach of N2Africa across the 11 countries. Currently we are busy finalising the annual report for 2017 which will be the topic of our next Podcaster, but for now we hope you will enjoy reflecting on what we have achieved over the past eight years!
Ken Giller had the privilege of spending some time visiting delivery and dissemination (D&D) as well as research trials on agronomy and rhizbiology in Zimbabwe in February. The season started with difficulty in southern Africa, with a ‘false start’ to the season and then a three week dry period that led to failed early plantings of many crops and late planting periods for others. Nevertheless, there was a lot to see in the fields, and legumes suffer less from the late start to the season as they are mainly planted after the maize crop is established.
Moving on from a "proof of concept" during the first phase of the N2Africa approach at scale, the second phase was designed to scale out the proven legume technologies using a "business led" approach. ...
Figure: Flow chart of inputs, services and grain product between different chickpea value chain actors belonging to the partnership ship case with Balegreen in Ethiopia, as highligted in the textbox
Grain legume production in northern Ghana is characterized with low yields due to declining soil fertility, inadequate use of farm inputs and lack of good quality inputs including certified seeds, phosphorus fertilizers and rhizobium inoculants.
A contribution on partnerships and a success story.
Figure: Diagrammatic representation of input distribution and marketing of soyabean model
The success of cowpea response to inoculation with effective rhizobia strain in presence of indigenous rhizobia depends on three factors; population density, effectiveness and competitive ability of native African rhizobia. ...
Picture: (A) Growing rhizobia strains, (B) Ojo Comfort in the greenhouse with growing cowpea and (C) growth response of cowpea to three different treatments
My name is Mercy Haruna Wakawa. I am from Borno state Nigeria and I studied Food Science and Technology at the University of Maiduguri. Like every other Nigerian youth I was full of dreams and enthusiasm for a robust working career and livelihood after graduating from University. ...
“Sustainability” was the theme of the third N2Africa Tanzania review and planning meeting, that took place on October 19th-20th, 2016 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The meeting brought together 34 participants drawn from partner institutions. ...
On 1st March 2017, almost 80 workshop participants attended a field learning visit for the N2Africa and TAMASA projects. The learning visit aimed to provide the participants the opportunity of learning about the project implementation progress and through reflections, establish personal and collective learning for better implementation. Moreover, having both projects participants go together on the learning visit, allowed cross learning.
Photo: Impression of the visit to Koena Cooperative society, Bukedea District
Mr. Berkimas is one of the farmers trained by N2Africa on soyabean processing at IITA Kalambo. After the training he decided to start a small business of soyabean and cassava processing in Kavumu (one of the villages of Bukavu, around 25 km from Bukavu city). Here, soyabean cultivation is common. Mr. Berkimas bought processing equipment worth 4600 US$ with his own funds. ...
Test marketing of BNF technologies through Kenya’s One Stop Shop network continues. In this report we examine the purchasing preference of 179 customers at 14 shops in advance of the 2017 long rains growing season. Three BNF technology products: BIOFIX inoculant, Sympal fertilizer and Saga soyabean, were provided to shop operator in return for keeping a detailed log of customers and their purchases. ...
Figure: Purchases of 179 individual test-marketed customers
Prior to 2015, awareness of the advantages of soyabean inoculation was created among farmers in Malawi by N2Africa, but soyabean inoculant remained largely unavailable to farmers. Inoculant production was mostly limited to research (with only a few hundred sachets being sold to farmers) through the government’s Department of Agriculture Research Services (DARS). This public institution was unable to scale its production to meet the inoculant demand. This was the situation until 2015, when Agro-Input Suppliers Limited (AISL) stepped in ...
Photo: AISL Laboratory under construction in Kanengo Lilongwe. The expected completion date is January 2018 and ready for use in March 2018.
Towards the end the N2Africa project focused on scaling out the legume technologies proven under Phase I using a “business-led” approach. This involved engaging government, development organizations, and the private sector, creating awareness on N2Africa technologies and approaches, and facilitating dissemination campaigns. ...
Photo: Maria Miguel Noe now provides seeds to her community. Photo credits Wilson Leonardo
Mr. Celestine as part of a farmer group called TWIZERANE started to work with N2Africa in 2010. Until this time, his group was only able to grow crops using traditional methods. ...
Photo: Mr. Gashirabake Celestine holding his certificate
As we move into the last year of active farmer engagement, the research team in Zimbabwe has begun tapping into a large knowledge base that has been built by N2Africa in the last 8 years. Informed by ‘if we do what we have always done, we will get what we have always got’, we recently innovated our dissemination and training approach over the recent post-harvest period (May - October) for our nutrition and marketing initiatives.
Picture 4. Measuring ingredients for nutritional porridge in Hwedza District
N2Africa proudly takes stock of the strategic partnerships established to scale out and sustain its promoted services and technologies. Being implemented in 11 countries, N2Africa sealed 86 comprehensive partnerships with public and private organizations reaching 222,850 farmers in 2015-16 and aiming towards 550,000 in 2018. The partnerships are linked to value chain projects with similar objectives, leveraging resources and creating synergies. In this article we describe how partners view the benefits of partnerships, the various market models used in partnerships and the main challenge different legume value-chain partners encounter: how to generate sufficient supply of produce for a market based approach. Using one specific example, we disentangle the factors that determine supply by farmer cooperatives. ...
It started some time ago in 2012 when the N2Africa project Nigeria extended its dissemination activities to Niger State located in the North Central Zone of Nigeria. There, the campaign was further devolved to Shiroro Local Government Area (LGA) where Malam Isah Wakili lives with his family, in a community called Gwagwa which is largely dominated by the Gwari tribe. ...
Right: Malam Isah’s household and other neighbours who are often nourished by legume recipes
Learning plays a central role in N2Africa. The success of our dissemination approaches depends on the ability to determine what works, where how and for whom and to adapt activities accordingly. Key to this process of learning, is a system of data collection, management and delivery that ensures that data is captured from the field and converted into an accessible form as quickly and accurately as possible. N2Africa has worked hard to establish such a system and we are happy to report on recent progress and future plans for improvement.
Our data flows are organized in the following way: our partners use paper survey forms to collect data from the field. ...
The N2Africa Vimeo videos that were on the N2Africa website have been made available as mp4 files. They have been uploaded on Youtube to make them available to a larger public;
This European based biennial congress brings together scientists focused on biological N2-fixation (BNF) from diverse research topics of biochemistry, microbiology, computational genomics, plant physiology, and more recently genetic engineering and aquatic microbiology.
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