In Ethiopia where the mixed crop-livestock system is a predominant feature in agriculture, promotion of improved production technology is expected to boost grain legume production with a concomitant increase in the amount of legume residues for livestock feeding.

N2Africa followers do not need convincing about the benefits of legumes to smallholders. Yet, legumes mean different things to different people. Agro-foresters may think of tree legumes, livestock specialists may interpret legumes to mean forages, while to crop agronomists legumes tend to be grain legumes. Legumes are indeed a diverse class of plants – they are diverse in form: from the mighty Acacia to the diminutive white clover.

The 2015 season commenced with a bee hive of activities after the Annual Review and Planning Meeting in Abuja, Nigeria. The driving force for these activities was the new engagements with private actors (NGOs) in the value chain to further expand the intensity of N2Africa activities, especially regarding dissemination, monitoring and evaluation. The Nigeria team was committed to pursue and implement these activities, popularly tagged as ‘New Partnerships’.

Contract sprayers applying pesticides for a fee for farmers in Borno state in Nigeria do not follow responsible use practices.

Last December a special issue of the IITA newsletter, dedicated to N2Africa Youth Agripreneurs was released.

The first set of NoduMax legume inoculant developed by IITA and N2Africa at the Business Incubation Platform (BIP, IITA-headquarters, Ibadan, Nigeria) has been released for distribution to soyabean farmers during the rainy season 2015. More than 32,000 sachets containing 100 g of soyabean inoculant were produced for sharing mainly with partners of the N2Africa network in Nigeria and Ghana. At the same time, the NoduMax team carried out product monitoring and evaluation trials on station (IITA campus).

The overall goal of the Borno Youth Agripreneur activities is to re-orientate rural youths towards more productive engagement in agriculture. In 2014, the IYA organized - in collaboration with the N2Africa project - a training workshop on "Agribusiness, a key to productive youth engagement". Twenty young people were selected and enabled to increase their knowledge in sustainable crop and fish production practices and develop the entrepreneurial skills in agribusiness to promote self-dependence.

• N2Africa is mentioned in an interview on low-cost nitrogen fixing technology with Emmanuel Chikwari from the Chemistry and Soil Research Institute in Zimbabwe, published by SciDev.net.
• The

Ludy Keino et al. published from N2Africa work in Kenya in PLOS one journal: "Nutrients Limiting Soybean (Glycine max l) Growth in Acrisols and Ferralsols of Western Kenya".