In Podcaster 28 on page 8 we informed you on the training of youths from Borno State Nigeria on Agrobusiness.

We now also received their report which is attached here

First announcement

On behalf of N2Africa Ken Giller accepted the invitation for N2Africa to cohost the joint PanAfrican Grain Legume and World Cowpea Conference, to celebrate the 2016 International Year of Pulses, as declared by the United Nations (http://www.iyop.net/). The conference is organized by Legume Innovation Lab, Michigan State University and IITA.

Welcome to the last Podcaster for 2014! We realize that this drops into your mailbox when you are rushing to finish all of those urgent tasks before the end of the year. Yet we hope you’ll find some time to read through as we have lots of exciting news from all over the continent with articles from DRC, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Rwanda and Sierra Leone – where our N2Africa colleagues are managing to continue some very interesting work despite the problems. We also report on our review and planning workshop hold in Arusha in October and summarise our Master Plans.

One of the strategies of N2Africa is to open new opportunities for poor farmers and vulnerable groups by working with other players in the legume value chain and get them aggregated and linked to markets. In Tanzania there are already field based farmer organizations emerging.

The N2Africa Master Plans¹ are documents intended to foster a common approach across the five Core Countries. So far seven master plans have been developed. These are Agronomy, Dissemination, Monitoring & Evaluation and Data Management, Rhizobiology, Communication, Gender and Innovation platforms. The plans are designed to achieve the N2Africa Vision of Success and the objectives set out in the Research Framework of the approved project proposal. This means all Master Plans need to ensure timely delivery of the outputs and outcomes.

In the 2014 growing season, two digital data collection methods were explored in Ada’a and Damot Gale districts of Ethiopia. The first approach is using Google Nexus tablets by extension workers and research technicians to collect both agronomic and socio-economic data. The second approach is using SMS method in which farmers send information on agronomic practices using SMS (Crowdsourcing). The SMS method is being carried out in Ada’a district, where 50 farmers are participating in the pilot test.