During the long rains season (March – July 2014), 5 demo plots were established in the Northern province of Rwanda in collaboration with N2Africa partner DRD and farmers’ associations and individual farmers as well, with the objective of promoting the best method of staking and the use of inoculants on climbing bean. Results have showed a good response to inoculants in all sites and on all varieties used.

In Kenya the five main objectives are 1) expanding awareness of BNF technologies, 2) dissemination of proven BNF and grain legume production technologies, 3) conduct training in BNF technologies, 4) design field demonstrations of N2Africa best practice that are conducted by others, and 5) backstop Kenya’s inoculant industry. Here is a brief description of our approach to each objective.

Expanding awareness of BNF technologies

• A second demand driven training-of-trainers workshop on harvesting and post-harvest management of legumes was conducted in May 2014 in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security’s Department of Agricultural Research Services (Crop Storage). Twenty-five extension workers comprising of 21 men and 4 women were trained.
• A Stakeholder Conference hosted by N2Africa-Malawi was held on the 5^th of June 2014, in Lilongwe, Malawi.

During the period June-September, N2Africa activities in Zimbabwe focused on local level value addition of grain legumes through nutrition workshops that involved mostly women farmers and dissemination of project technologies at both ward and district agricultural shows, which are annual events. These activities were held in all the five districts where N2Africa is implementing activities, in line with N2Africa’s increased dissemination of technologies thrust.

Efforts of the government and development partners have stirred the interest of soybean production among farmers in Tanzania. The crop that is mainly cultivated for human consumption, utilization in animal feeds, soil fertility improvement and as source of income has increased in demand over the recent years.

Research on the use of Rhizobia inoculants has been conducted in Africa since 1950s. However, the technology has not been widely applied by farmers on the continent. In Kenya, wide-scale adoption of this innovation among the smallholder farmers is still low. The aim of this study was to examine factors that drive the use of BIOFIX^® Rhizobia inoculant, a product of Kenya, and its profitability in smallholder farms. Data were collected from 210 soybean (Glycine max) farmers in western Kenya.

Last year we conducted our Masters theses for N2Africa in the Usambara Mountains in Tanzania. You might have seen some of the updates about our research on the N2Africa Facebook page. From October until February we did fieldwork in the Usambaras where we worked toghether with local farmers to study the nutrient deficiencies for the production of common bean. We performed factorial field trials with inoculation and phoshorus and potassium fertilizers as inputs. During the research we collected leaf and soil samples and interviewed farmers.

The gender report for Phase I, related to milestone 4.5.2. was published on our website on August 7^th. It presents a lot of information on womens’ involvement in the N2Africa activities stated in numbers. You might already have opened it from our Facebook website, where it was shared on August 7^th.