The N2Africa family has lost a colleague. Mr. G. Zargba Gaye, a beloved and humble colleague died unexpectedly after a brief illness. This sad event occurred on February 9, 2013 at the St. Joseph Catholic Hospital in Monrovia.

I’m writing this introduction from Ethiopia where Esther Ronner and I have been discussing N2Africa activities for this year with many partners in Bahir Dar, Debre Zeit and Addis Ababa. We have a ‘bridging grant’ from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to get N2Africa up and running in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Uganda.

Introduction

The Eastern part of DR Congo, in the Sud Kivu province, is one of the target areas of N2Africa. In DR Congo, N2Africa’s objectives 3 (rhizobiology studies) and 5 (capacity building) are led by Université Catholique de Bukavu (U.C.B.) through the faculty of agriculture, one of the project partners.

As Phase 1 of the N2Africa project comes to a close in October this year we have reviewed and agreed on work plans for the remaining period (and of course the finances). The planning of this year’s activities has been guided by what needs to be done to achieve our objectives for delivery and dissemination (D&D). On the other hand we will conduct an ‘early impact assessment’ to evaluate the success and draw lessons on how D&D of legume and BNF technologies can be improved in future.

In Part 1, published in the last Podcaster, we read how N2Africa established successful partnership with ADVANCE. This time, we report about this year’s training of ADVANCE’s Operational Communities in Tibali (Savelugu district) and Kpatribor (Karaga district), including in total 48 participants, of which 17% women.

 Background

A follow-up workshop was conducted at Makerere University on 4^th February 2013 to identify partners and to agree on start up activities for the N2Africa Project in Uganda.