In northern Uganda, N2Africa dissemination efforts through demonstrations, adaptations, media events and field days, amongst others, have created demand for grain legume technologies, especially improved soyabean varieties. However, there is a challenge to access the improved varieties from the formal seed systems, because they hardly deal in grain legume seed.

Kongwa district has suitable climatic conditions for growing groundnut and is among the top producers in Tanzania. However, production is being threatened by many factors including declining soil fertility, the changing climate, lack of improved varieties and contamination with aflatoxin - a highly poisonous chemical produced by naturally occurring fungus, Aspergillus flavus, found in the soil.

The N2Africa Baseline report was published for Ethiopia, Tanzania and Uganda, establishing the initial status of livelihoods through assessment of household characteristics, agricultural production, nutrition and market access.

New reports have been uploaded for the ESRC-DFID project that we introduced in Podcaster 36. More are to be expected in the near future.

KIT (Royal Tropical Institute) and SNV published an interesting working paper "Market-based solutions for input supply: 12 making inputs accessible for smallholder farmers in Africa".

There is an update on the Second International Legume Society Conference, scheduled to be held at Tróia, Portugal, from 12^th to 14^th October 2016. Websites: http://ils.nsseme.com/#meet and http://www.itqb.unl.pt/meetings-and-courses/legumes-for-a-sustainable-world/welcome#content.

Since the last Podcaster, N2Africa was show-cased at the Joint Pan-African Grain Legume and World Cowpea Conference in Livingstone, February 28 – March 4. N2Africa was well represented; we funded 53 participants, presented 15 posters and 3 talks and led a special session on Grain legume nitrogen fixation and contributions to sustainable intensification. It was a great opportunity to get up to date on all of the great research going on around the world with a special emphasis on Africa.

Listening to presentations for almost a week at the Joint Pan-African Grain Legume and World Cowpea Conference early this year, it was clear that there a lot of efforts that are going on the African continent that are geared towards intensifying legume production for smallholder farmers in a sustainable way. However, a big question was still lingering in mind as to why smallholder farmers were still not catching the ‘fire’ of all these efforts?