We welcome Theresa Ampadu-Boakye to N2Africa as monitoring and evaluation specialist – and I’m pleased to report that we now have a full complement of staff across the project. ...

The past two months have been an exciting time for N2Africa and we have a lot to report. ...

Photo left: no manure, right: with manure and P fertilizer

Theresa Ampadu-Boakye (Mrs) is the Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist for N2Africa. Prior to her appointment, she had worked as the Regional Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist for Towards Sustainable Clusters in Agribusiness Through Learning in Entrepreneurship (2SCALE) Project implemented by the International Fertilizer Development Centre (IFDC) for the North and West Africa Division where she developed and implemented a web based monitoring and evaluation system and an accompanying Project Monitoring and Evaluation Plan (PMEP) for the project. She had also worked for eight years with the German Development Cooperation (GIZ) funded Market Oriented Agriculture Programme (MOAP) as a Technical Advisor and subsequently as Senior Technical Advisor responsible for monitoring and evaluation and organizational development. ...

N2Africa has been granted an extra US$5 million supplementary grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to expand its activities to Borno State, North-Eastern Nigeria. The request that N2Africa start activities in Borno came from the State Governor, another signal that the N2Africa story is reaching its potential clients! This initiative is aligned to a polio vaccination campaign, supported by the foundation, and will operate in a set of Local Government Areas in the south of the State, where security is less problematic (see map). ...

The second phase of N2Africa is organized around a decentralized structure with much of the decision-making processes residing with the coordinators of the core countries, in close consultation with the project leadership and coordination team. This was a necessary modification to the structure of the first phase, in view of the more opportunistic, partner-led strategies required for delivering the vision of success of phase II ...

We’re happy to present three posters which are ready to use as extension materials in N2Africa. Two posters deal with inoculation, presenting inoculation methods for the two most widely used inoculants, LegumeFix and Biofix. The third poster shows different methods for staking climbing beans, including the advantages and disadvantages of the different methods. Please download the posters and use them however and whenever you like. Alternatively you can find the posters on www.n2africa.org.

The successful proposal of Phase II of N2Africa has given us an opportunity to select sites for the new countries in N2Africa to maximise the relevance of the research findings for different environments and communities. Collating information and reviewing the literature to identify the major factors that promote or hinder the adoption of grain legumes in sub Saharan Africa resulted in developing the conceptual framework  on grain legume yield and biological nitrogen fixation at scale, and guided the choice of variables that need to be considered when characterising a new context. ...

Adoption domains for groundnuts in Tanzania

Two field trials have been conducted as follows and preliminary data analysis done: 1) Effect of intercropping patterns on biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) and crop productivity and 2) Effect of cowpea-maize relay intercropping on biological nitrogen fixation and crop productivity across fields of different soil fertility levels in northern Guinea and Sudan savanna agroecological zones of Ghana. ...