A national planning workshop for the N2Africa project in Uganda was conducted from 27^th to 30^th January 2015 at Kabira Country Club in Kampala. The purpose of the workshop was twofold; to build a common understanding of the vision of the N2Africa project and the logic underpinning of the project action, and to develop a national work plan for the second year.

N2Africa Ethiopia national team in collaboration with Project Gender Specialist and the Centre for African Family Studies (CAFS), conducted gender training workshop during 15-18 December, 2014 at ILRI Addis Campus. The trainees were drawn from agronomy, soil sciences, plant breeding and socioeconomics and research extension departments of the NARS partners.

"Who is that white man with his walking stick and that little guy?" farmers started asking other farmers. I climbed many hills (I tried to do this as well with a bunch of banana on my head: nearly impossible), sloped down slippery hills on rubber boots and did this all together with my soil probe and my (female) translator. It was an unforgettable rich experience and I want to thank the project and the Ugandan farmers and people for that!

The 2015A rainy season is rapidly approaching in Uganda and northern Tanzania. For my PhD research on climbing beans in the highlands of these two countries, we have organized a number of discussions with farmer groups (Figure 1). In these discussions we evaluated the different climbing bean technologies that were demonstrated last season, and the experiences of farmers who tested one of these technologies on their own field. We will use the feedback from these discussions to tailor technologies for the next season.

In Ethiopia, N2Africa project activities are implemented in 27 Woredas (Districts) over four regions (Amhara, Benishangul-Gumuz, Oromia and Southern region) in partnership with national, international and private institutions and NGOs, thus promoting N₂-fixation and legume production technologies among smallholder farmers. The project targeted four legume crops in Ethiopia (soybean, common bean, Faba bean and chickpea).

Wytze Marinus did his MSc thesis research in Karaga district, part of the Northern Region and in Kassena Nankana district, Upper East Region, food insecure districts where considerable population growth rates will lead to increased demand for food production and higher pressure on agricultural lands.

Rwanda’s top musicians King James, Miss Jojo, Riderman,Tom Close, and Urban Boyz have donated their talent for a healthier Rwanda and promote beans as you can see in this clip from HarvestPlus.

(Published before on Facebook on 22 January 2015)

Catherine Njuguna (IITA) kindly shared with us a blog on the IITA website on very recent N2Africa activities in Tanzania.