Introduction

Although the funding for N2Africa ended in June 2019 we are still busy with reports, impact studies and scientific papers

Verifying contribution claims

N2Africa has gathered and monitored a lot of information about the impact of its work. However, the diversity of N2Africa’s interventions, their dynamism, and the widely different contexts where these have been implemented, make it tricky to derive strong inferences about the project’s impacts from suvey-based impact evaluations.

Can we trust land area estimates?

I expect that many readers of the N2Africa podcaster would readily answer ‘no’ to that question. However in spite of knowing that land area estimates can be unreliable, N2Africa and other agricultural development projects often rely on estimates of plot areas, and that on top of estimates of crop yield. We may have no other choice if we want a lot of data, preferably for multiple (past) seasons, for several crops in different countries.

Evaluation of the Productivity and Profitability of Soyabean (Glycine max [L.] Merr.) Production Technologies in the Nigerian Savannas

Introduction: Soyabean is an important crop in Nigeria, that has gradually evolved to be a crucial cash crop for rural households in the Nigerian Savannas due to its rising industrial demand. Nigeria is the second largest producer of soyabean after South Africa producing 700,000 Mt of soyabean per year. Despite its growing importance in the Nigeria savannas, soyabean yields are low due to several production constraints including poor soil fertility with emphasis on phosphorus, intermittent drought and low biological nitrogen fixation by adapted varieties.

Genetically diverse microsymbionts belonging to novel and other defined symbiovars are responsible for cowpea root nodulation in Northern Mozambique

Cowpea is an important food legume that is well-adapted to the semi-arid regions of the tropics. The bacteria nodulating cowpea exhibit a large diversity which has been reported in different regions of the world. Little is known about the rhizobia nodulating cowpea in Mozambican soils. In this study ERIC-PCR was used to characterise cowpea rhizobia. This method allowed us to distinguish 20 groups at a similarity level of 20%, indicating a high genomic diversity for the native rhizobial populations in the two agroecological zones.