The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) has just awarded a grant of $1,700.147 (including $420,376 in co-funding from other sources) to Tshwane University of Technology (TUT) in Pretoria, South Africa, to undertake capacity building in Legume Sciences for Africa. The project will focus mainly on training and research to increase yields of major food legumes in Africa such as cowpea, groundnut, common bean and soybean. The funding will be used for basic and applied training of 12 MSc and six PhD students over a five-year period.

Wednesday, 28th September 2011, was a big day for N2Africa when Bill Gates, Co-Chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, visited one of the project’s soybean-inoculant demonstration sites in Kano State, Nigeria. Mr Gates was accompanied by Jeff Raikes, the foundation’s Chief Executive Officer, Sam Dryden, Director of Agricultural Development, and Prem Warrior, Senior Project Officer with specific responsibility for N2Africa,. The team was received by the N2Africa Nigeria Coordinator, Dr Abdullahi Bala.