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. Together with the addition of Jeff Ehlers, who leads the Small Grains & Legumes Crop Team within the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to support Charlene McKoin in an oversight role for N2Africa this puts us in great shape for the forthcoming challenges of delivering on the ambition of N2Africa.

We received a message from Kenya Soyabeans Farmers’ Association (KESOFA): To their and our regret they had to announce that their Chairman Rev. Kivandah has passed away on May 3^rd because of a stroke. He was great with KESOFA and he will be missed. KESOFA staffs will succeed his will and continue endeavouring to expand the organisation and community.

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.

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.

IITA and N2Africa are exploring commercial inoculant production through its recently established Business Incubation Platform (BIP). A new building was constructed at the BIP that has ample room to accommodate different inoculant production lines and scales of operation. The factory consists of a warehouse area, a carrier preparation room, a station where broth is prepared and mixed with carrier, a curing room, a product storage room, and a quality control laboratory.

Field work was started in the Cropping season of 2013 from May to November 2013. 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.

N2Africa Phase II is going full speed ahead, and we’ve already had our first round of reporting to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In the first months of N2Africa Phase II, we have made good progress towards Objective 1 - Project strategy, coordination and implementation and capacity strengthening. Country teams were formed and soon after involved in many meetings and workshops. In addition, an overall technical expertise team, leading activities across all countries, has been established.