Welcome to the first Podcaster of 2017. N2Africa activities are running at full speed across the eleven countries. One of the great things about working across East, West and Southern Africa is that there are always crops in the field somewhere. Inside you’ll find some photos from field days this week around maturing crops in Malawi and Mozambique. At the same time we have national planning meetings being held in East and West Africa – and we include a report from the Uganda workshop.

A year ago, I was in Uganda to study farmers’ adaptations of improved climbing bean technologies in the Eastern and Southwestern highlands. These improved technologies had been shown to farmers at N2Africa demonstration trials, and they tested the practices of their liking on their own land.

Rizobacter is an Argentinian company strongly committed to delivering sustainable solutions to farmers around the world. In Rizobacter´s 40-year history, excellence in quality and continuous innovation has been the forefront, enabling the company to develop state-of-the-art technologies in the formulation of liquid biological products. Strategic alliances with renowned companies, expanded the company´s product line to include adjuvants and crop nutrition products.

My MSc Internship was undertaken from October 2016 to January 2017 with the Plant Production Systems (PPS) chair group at Wageningen University & Research and the N2Africa project. The purpose of my MSc Internship was to review aspects of the N2Africa project. The review process comprised of two studies, the Public- Private Partnership (PPP) study and the Quick Survey Study. These two studies will feed into the N2Africa project’s Annual Reporting for 2016.

In the Daily Trust an article was published on IITA working with N2Africa on a robust agricultural schema with Borno Youth resulting in reduction of unemployment.

For those reading Dutch: an article was published in het Algemeen Dagblad with the title “Vlinderbloempje als hoop voor Afrika” (Legume flower as hope for Africa) using a photo of beans in experiments of Edouard Rurangwa.

With the tremendous contributions made by dozens of pulse scientists from around the world, the final 10-Year Research Strategy for Pulse Crops was completed in December (see link). It shows a rich picture of the tremendous potential of pulse crops and the key arenas for research investment.
 

• CIAT Blog: The world without beans: opinion piece;
• CIAT Blog: Snack bars with a winning twist: beans in the international spotlight;
• Tropical Legumes III: Release of bio-fortified bean varieties in Uganda;
• Soybean Innovation Lab Newsletters:

Virtual symposium, “Nitrogen: At the Nexus Between Food Security and Sustainability.”
This on-line, real time symposium will be held on March 8 & 9, 2017 from 9am-11:30am US Pacific Time, and is hosted by Michael Udvardi of the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, USA, and John Peters of Washington State University, USA.