Designing development-to-research approaches that support positive changes in livelihoods of farmers require actions that are based on solid project evaluations and impact studies. The N2Africa project evaluations are based on the results framework and distinguish results on activities, outputs and outcomes. This framework has been used on an annual basis to monitor and evaluate progress and foster learning (Podcaster 36).

At the end of N2Africa phase I, we looked at the ‘early impact’ of the project. Next to a number of surveys among farmers, agro-dealers, partners, we also carried out several case studies. One of these case studies involved an effort to explore to what extent the legume varieties disseminated by N2Africa through demonstration trials had spread beyond the farmers directly involved in the project.

N2Africa is scaling-out grain legume technologies, practices and models to benefit smallholder farmers in multiple, diverse and heterogeneous contexts of sub-Saharan Africa. This scaling-out process benefits from our understanding of the factors that affect adoption of grain legumes and how those factors vary across different contexts. Our understanding of how factors change in different contexts allows us to select the best bets for a particular context.

Last year, N2Africa was selected as one of the six in-depth case studies within the PROIntensAfrica Initiative (www.intensafrica.org). PROIntensAfrica aims to build a long-term research and innovation partnership between Africa and the European Union, focusing on the improvement of food and nutrition security through sustainable intensification. Since N2Africa’s selection as case study, a literature study, stakeholder interviews and household level survey were held in the two countries involved in this study: Kenya and Ghana.

The Western Region Agriculture Technology Evaluation (WeRATE) is the main N2Africa outreach partner in Kenya and presented an award-winning exhibit at the recently concluded Agriculture Society of Kenya (ASK) Kakamega Show (June 16^th-18^th, 2016).

The country team in Kenya has produced three recent publications that may interest N2Africa partners in other countries. These publications include an article within an open access scientific journal, a book chapter on our Innovation Platform and a widely-distributed 48-page extension booklet covering our outreach operations.

Soyabean booklet in Afan Oromo (among the widely spoken languages in Ethiopia), produced in collaboration with project partners (OARI, 2SCALE, and Guts Agro).