Last month I was delighted to host Christian Witt (Senior Project Officer for N2Africa at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation). In addition to updating Christian on N2Africa we joined discussions with a large, high-level delegation from Ethiopia visiting Wageningen.

A PhD student from Warwick, after hearing Ken Giller talk about N2Africa at her University, opted for a 10 day research placement within N2Africa and was given the opportunity to visit N2Africa Uganda. After her return she wrote:

Dear Ken,

I returned from Uganda this week. I must say I have been amazed by the work that is done there! It is an incredible idea and the science communication is excellent! The team of N2AFRICA seems to be very carefully chosen. Inspiring, strong people that love their job and they taught me a lot.

For over sixty years, Mr. Clement Hange has been a farmer in his community of Mbanor in Konshisha Local Government Area of Benue State, Nigeria. All that time he was happy with the returns he got from his farming efforts. However, when he got selected as a lead farmer to take care of a demonstration plot for his farmer group ‘Hange Multi-Purpose Cooperative Society Ltd’, he changed his mind on how he had been farming soyabean for over two decades.

My name is Mercy Haruna Wakawa. I am from Borno state Nigeria and I studied Food Science and Technology at the University of Maiduguri. Like every other Nigerian youth I was full of dreams and enthusiasm for a robust working career and livelihood after graduating from University. I searched endlessly for corporate jobs that are no longer available for my generation. My dreams suddenly collapsed as I came face-to-face with the reality of vanishing job opportunities and an increasing rate of youth unemployment in my country.

It started some time ago in 2012 when the N2Africa project Nigeria extended its dissemination activities to Niger State located in the North Central Zone of Nigeria. There, the campaign was further devolved to Shiroro Local Government Area (LGA) where Malam Isah Wakili lives with his family, in a community called Gwagwa which is largely dominated by the Gwari tribe. N2Africa activities were launched in this area to introduce legumes in a farming system that is dominated by tuber crops and cereals. During this launch, Malam indicated his interest to participate.

This report describes the supply of BNF technology products by the N2Africa Project in Kenya during the 2017 long rains. This is the penultimate growing season of our activities in Kenya, and one that undertook a difficult transition from the grassroots focus of the past to an agribusiness orientation.

Most smallholder farmers in Tanzania depend on beans for daily subsistence. However, yields remain significantly below their potential, which is partly due to the lack of information about improved farming practices and the appropriate use of agricultural inputs. Therefore, N2Africa and its partners, notably the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI) and Farm Radio International (FRI) launched the Maharage Bingwa Campaign (MBC).

As Nile and Brady’s classic text, The Nature and Properties of Soils notes, the slash-and-burn system is not inherently unsustainable. In theory, natural vegetation is cut and burned from a plot of land and crops are grown for several years until the nutrients, built up over years, have been used and yields begin to decline. The farmer then moves on to the next plot to continue the cycle.