In many regions where N2Africa works, farmers need to plant soyabean at the beginning of the growing season in order to have a mature crop by the time the rains cease. The humid tropics covering most of Sierra Leone and Liberia however are blessed with a rainy season of at least 7 months and a total annual rainfall often well over 2000 mm. Results from a planting date trial conducted in Sierra Leone in 2012 however indicated that the long growing season does not mean that farmers have a long window to plant soyabean.

The goal of MFAGRO is to bring new technology to its members and the farmers of Vihiga County, Western Kenya. We recognize the N2Africa Program and its partners CIAT, MEA Ltd. and Promasidor for assisting our group toward that end over the past year (2012) and we look forward to working with you during 2013. Much of MFAGRO’s effectiveness and growth we owe to our collaboration. Over the past year, we conducted five farmer field days with N2Africa that were attended by 573 farmers (51% women).

Outreach activities continue to test new soyabean varieties, input combinations and cropping arrangements that promote BNF. During the 2012 long rains in west Kenya (March to July), two new soyabean varieties from SeedCo were compared to SB 19 (the current industry standard). SB 19 was also evaluated with and without addition of zinc in an effort to further improve the Sympal fertilizer blend as well as in combination with two new cereal crops, dwarf white sorghum (SC Sila) and IR maize (WS303).

A two days’ sensitization workshop was conducted from 11-12/2/2013 at The Nelson Mandela African Institute of science and Technology in – Arusha – Tanzania, to plan for the N2Africa project activities in Northern Tanzania. The workshop was attended by more than 30 participants.

The Crawford Fund Master Class was a two-week training course, held from the 1^st -13^th of December 2012 in the city of Kandy, Sri Lanka on all the skills and techniques of rhizobiology. Participants were from nine countries namely Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, South Africa, Kenya, India, Thailand, Vietnam and the host Sri Lanka. The facilitators were from Murdoch University, Australia and the coordinators were from Australia and Sri Lanka.

Legumes, such as groundnuts, sugar beans, soyabeans, cowpeas and bambara nuts, are important in the cropping systems of smallholder farmers in the communal areas in Zimbabwe. These legumes are often referred to as women’s crops and they are not given as much attention as other crops like maize, tobacco and cotton. Despite the fact that legumes enhance soil fertility through biological nitrogen fixation (BNF), their role in human nutrition and their contribution to household cash income are still not highly appreciated.

This podcast is designed to provide a glimpse into the Bill & Melinda Gates strategies and the people who work at the foundation, and is part of their ongoing effort to share information with you on a regular basis.

In January’s episode (Episode 5):

From Agro-Insight we received a link to a video on women in extension. The link is available several languages. Click the language of your choise if you want to watch: English, French, Kiswahili or Portugese.

IFDC offers a training program "Linking Farmers to Markets in Africa" in East Africa. It will be held in Nairobi, Kenya, July 1-5, 2013.

the program is meant for development professionals from both public and private sector with specific interest in farmer-to-market linkages, such as agro-input dealers, importers, traders and trader organizations; producer organizations; and development projects, donors, NGOs and other agricultural development practitioners.

The MSc, BSc, internship reports of our Wageningen University students are made freely available on our website. You wil find the reports under the tab "outputs". All our work done in Wageningen is done via global access and we are aiming to make it available to everybody.

We have many students still studying at partner universities in Africa and we hope very much that their thesis reports will be made available very soon.