Moving on from a "proof of concept" during the first phase of the N2Africa approach at scale, the second phase was designed to scale out the proven legume technologies using a "business led" approach. The legume intensification technologies vary from country to country, among crops and regions within countries but include a strong focus on getting the best legume varieties and management approaches in place being inoculants, fertilizer with P, K and other nutrients, and ancillary interventions.

N2Africa-Ethiopia held its second annual planning and the Public-Private Partnership Validation workshop on 21-23, January 2015 with about 90 participants from the NARS, private partners, ILRI, CG centers, representatives of farmers’ organizations and N2Africa leadership staff from Nairobi, Ibadan and Wageningen.

The 2015 annual project planning workshop took place from 3-5 February, 2015 at the Modern City Hotel, Tamale. Samuel Adjei-Nsiah (country coordinator) welcomed the participants and gave an overview of N2Africa project in Ghana. He also pointed out the objectives of the workshop and invited the partners to share their expectations.

A national planning workshop for the N2Africa project in Uganda was conducted from 27^th to 30^th January 2015 at Kabira Country Club in Kampala. The purpose of the workshop was twofold; to build a common understanding of the vision of the N2Africa project and the logic underpinning of the project action, and to develop a national work plan for the second year.

N2Africa Ethiopia national team in collaboration with Project Gender Specialist and the Centre for African Family Studies (CAFS), conducted gender training workshop during 15-18 December, 2014 at ILRI Addis Campus. The trainees were drawn from agronomy, soil sciences, plant breeding and socioeconomics and research extension departments of the NARS partners.

"Who is that white man with his walking stick and that little guy?" farmers started asking other farmers. I climbed many hills (I tried to do this as well with a bunch of banana on my head: nearly impossible), sloped down slippery hills on rubber boots and did this all together with my soil probe and my (female) translator. It was an unforgettable rich experience and I want to thank the project and the Ugandan farmers and people for that!

The 2015A rainy season is rapidly approaching in Uganda and northern Tanzania. For my PhD research on climbing beans in the highlands of these two countries, we have organized a number of discussions with farmer groups (Figure 1). In these discussions we evaluated the different climbing bean technologies that were demonstrated last season, and the experiences of farmers who tested one of these technologies on their own field. We will use the feedback from these discussions to tailor technologies for the next season.

In Ethiopia, N2Africa project activities are implemented in 27 Woredas (Districts) over four regions (Amhara, Benishangul-Gumuz, Oromia and Southern region) in partnership with national, international and private institutions and NGOs, thus promoting N₂-fixation and legume production technologies among smallholder farmers. The project targeted four legume crops in Ethiopia (soybean, common bean, Faba bean and chickpea).