On November 4th, 2013, we welcome, at the Hilton Nairobi, the steering committee, our partners and stakeholders to the round-up event of the first phase of N2Africa. Four years ago, N2Africa embarked on a mission to put nitrogen fixation to work for smallholder farmers in Africa. Now, we are ready to present the results from our work over the past four years and the achievements of the project.
We have named the event "Putting nitrogen fixation to work for smallholder farmers in Africa using an development to research approach", aiming to learn from the experience in the project how to integrate delivery and dissemination of legume and biological nitrogen fixation technology better with research, to improve adoption and increase impact on smallholder farmer households.
The program for the day consists of four sections. The first will provide an overview of the project and give impressions that tell the story of what we have done and the impact the project has generated.
The second section is on results and outcomes of our work: the agronomy research, the rhizobiology work and the delivery and dissemination. We will discuss how to improve delivery of the results and outcomes achieved.
In the third section we will discuss the ‘development to research’ approach, with feedback from our partners and stakeholders in the public and private sector on how development is achieved, on the role of research is in this process and how the different partners and stakeholders reflect this through their activities.
In the final section we will draw conclusions on the lessons learned and gather views on the way forward to achieve sustainable impact for the smallholder farmer community through improving farming system productivity using legume and BNF technology.
We look forward to a lively interaction.
We will end with a reception to celebrate the successful close of this phase of N2Africa.
I bid you a warm welcome.
Jeroen Huising, N2Africa Coordinator