I’m writing this introduction from meetings in Berlin – the Think20 Dialogue on Global Solutions associated with the G20 Germany 2017 – see link – and the Leadership Council of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network – see link. Although very important at the political and policy level, these high level summits seem far from the reality of life in rural Africa, although a major focus of these initiatives is addressing inequality.

When farmers are empowered with knowledge on N2Africa technologies, this information can be disseminated to others. One of the strategies to disseminate research results of N2Africa at scale in South Kivu, Eastern DRC, has been the training of students of agriculture high schools in the N2Africa action sites. The trained students in turn train households in their villages. This article contains the stories of three farmers about how the learned about N2Africa’s technologies and the impact on their livelihoods.

With so many articles and reports, extension materials and student theses emerging from N2Africa we realised that it was necessary to make it easier to find our outputs. For this reason we have revised the N2Outputs tab with clearer categories. If you have problems finding the information you need, or if you have suggestions for improvement of the website, please help us by contacting N2Africa.office@wur.nl.

This story highlights the testimony of Mukakayonde Claudine, a woman from Mareba Sector, Rango Cell, Bugesera District. She is 47 years old, married to Manassé and they have six children. Her life has changed due to N2Africa project.

Before the start of N2Africa project in her area, she was producing soyabean but with no plan for development. She was mixing all crops together and the yield was always very low. She had no knowledge of an agricultural practice that could lead to increased soyabean yield. However, she knew that soyabean can improve the nutrition of her children.

“Before N2Africa started working with us in TWIZERANE farmer’s association, we used to grow crops in a traditional way, no use of improved crop varieties, or fertilizer. The crop yield was always low because of ignorance. After interacting with N2Africa technologies in 2010, I saw the difference between improved technologies and the traditional method of cropping, especially inoculation of soyabean coupled with the use of DAP and planting in row, which significantly increased our production of bush bean and soyabean crops”. This was remarked by Mr.

New agricultural technologies help to innovate and modernize agricultural production in the light of climate change and soil degradation. Research has confirmed that the addition of inoculant to soyabean can boost yields with at least 40 % to 50 % with all other factors kept equal. Another benefit of inoculation is that it stimulates a high grain protein content (up to 40%). This is a great story for Africa with many of its countries depending on agriculture. The effect of inoculants on soyabean yields is the magical story that every farmer would like to hear.

One strategy by the N2Africa project to enhance legume productivity in Africa was to select rhizobial strains with enhanced biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) efficiency from the various countries (as part of the G_L x G_R x E x M framework) for use as inoculants. In line with this goal, I isolated rhizobia from beans growing in several agro-ecologies in Kenya and first assessed their genetic diversity.