All systems go!!!

It gives me great pleasure to send you our first N2Africa newsletter. Since the initial start-up workshop in January lot's has happened and the priority has been to get action on the ground with partners and farmers.

We have been very fortunate to appoint a full complement of core N2Africa project staff quickly and all started early this year. Meet the team - on the N2Africa website - led by Ken Dashiell (based in Nairobi), with Freddy Baijuka (Agronomist based in Western Kenya), Abdullahi Bala (Rhizobiologist based in northern Nigeria), Hakeem Ajeigbe (Dissemination specialist based in Malawi), Judith de Wolf (Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist based in Zimbabwe) and Mariana Rufino (Systems analyst based in Wageningen). These staff are supported by Paul Woomer (Dissemination specialist based in Nairobi), Bernard Vanlauwe who has an oversight role for East and Central Africa and Robert Abaidoo who has an oversight role in West Africa.

The Steering Committee is also complete (and gender-balanced) and we are fortunate to have such a breadth of expertise to advise us - meet them also on the N2Africa website.

Start-up workshops have been held in all of the partner countries and work on the ground is starting in phases due to the timing of the growing seasons. The fist farmers crops are already harvested in East and Central Africa, just being planted in West Africa and planned to start with the rains in November in southern Africa.

We are now gearing up our communications strategy. Please see the first results in the form of a ten minute video showing the first results from N2Africa in East and Central Africa on the N2Media page of the project website. You will also find a number of other training and information videos on the same page.

From now on will keep you informed regularly on progress. We are always looking for inputs and feedback so please feel free to contact me or the project in general through n2africa.office@wur.nl

Thanks for your continuing support,

Ken Giller