On Sunday December 9^th I returned from my visit to N2Africa Mozambique, the last leg of a trip that took me to all of the eight countries where the N2Africa project is implemented (excluding those countries that are serviced by the supplementary grant). Western Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Zimbabwe and Mozambique were visited. These visits allowed me to meet and get to know project staff.

In Ghana, the N2Africa project primarily seeks to promote the production and productivity of soyabean, cowpea and groundnut in the northern sector of the country. Various partners engage in establishing demonstration plots evaluating the use of rhizobium inoculants and phosphorus fertilizer (TSP and/or murriate of potash) and in some cases also nitrogen fertilizer (Urea). Also, they establish multi-location variety trials and multi-locational input trials with different types of fertilizers (organic and inorganic) of the three target legumes.

One of the larger challenges to those working in program outreach activities is linking "at least half of the farming communities" to legume processing initiatives. This target of course grows as more farmers participate in the program, for example over three years the number of groups participating in west Kenya is currently 26, suggesting that 13 processing operations need be established.

The focus of the N2Africa project is to put nitrogen fixation into use for smallholder farmers in Africa. In Zimbabwe, the project has been running for two seasons and is now entering its third and final season. The farmers have gained some commendable knowledge and have benefitted from the technologies. These include the use and the importance of the inoculants, methods recommended for intercropping, the best inter-row and in-row spacing and also the use of manures and appropriate fertiliser rates.

The N2Africa outreach activities in west Kenya work through 26 grassroots collaborators. This team typically installs 50 BNF technology demonstrations, conducts 25 farmer field days, operates 16 grain legume market collection points and assists the Legume Agronomy team with its on-farm experiments twice a year, owing to our bimodal rains. Often, these cooperators are also asked to host visitors, sometimes at short notice, who are graciously accommodated and leave with a strong understanding of our field operations.

It’s hard to believe it comes around so fast, but N2Africa has just entered the fourth and final year of the project. How to increase the uptake of the best N2-fixing legume technologies in this last stage of the project was a major topic of discussion at the N2Africa Leadership Team and Steering Committee meetings held in Nairobi in October. This was a great opportunity for Jeroen Huising to get to know the N2Afica team and establish himself as Project Coordinator.

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