To successfully realize the African transformation agenda, governments will have to capitalize on the potential of Africa’s youth. Growing up in an increasingly free and fair continent, the young people of Africa are dynamic, forward-looking and best positioned to find innovative solutions to local chal-lenges through the use of science and technology. To do this, conditions have to be suitable and young people need an environment in which barriers to self-actualization are broken.
This document summarizes the insights of YPARD young professionals and their opinions on AIS. In particular, the document refers to the YPARD e-discussion, which was held in September 2012 and raised the concern of the impact of the global economic recession and climate change on agriculture. This could lead to declining agricultural productivity, and low production further impacts the declining interest of youth in Agricultural activities.
The main goal of the study is to quantify the effects of a) change in nitrogen fertilization rate, b) adjustment of sowing date, c) implementation of new cultivars, and d) supplementary irrigation on maize cropping systems across six African countries including Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Malawi, Ethiopia and Burkina Faso. For this purpose, 30 years (1980-2010) of climate data are used as well as soil and management information obtained from global datasets at 0.5° x 0.5° spatial resolution.
Xanthomonas Wilt of Banana (BXW) is a complex problem in the African Great Lakes Region that is affecting the livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers. Since the first disease reports from Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2001, BXW has been studied widely. The majority of these studies focus on the technological or biophysical dimensions, while aspects and influence of socio-cultural, economic and institutional dimensions only recently started to gain attention.
The Scaling Agricultural Innovations Workshop gathered scaling experts from a range of organizations and agriculture sectors to share their experiences and ideas on the findings and lessons learned from five case studies (hybrid maize in Zambia, irrigated rice in Senegal, Purdue Improved Crop Storage bags in Kenya, agricultural machinery services in Bangladesh, and Kuroiler chickens in Uganda).
The 2014 Annual workshop of the CGIAR Consortium CapDev Community of Practice was held from September 10–12, 2014 at CGIAR Consortium Headquarters, Montpellier, France.The workshop was planned by a CapDev Convening Committee comprised of Iddo Dror (ILRI), Diana Brandes (Livestock & Fish), Per Rudebjer (Bioversity), Simone Staiger (CIAT), Mehmood Hassan (ICRAF), Javier Ekboir (ILAC), Alain Vidal/Luis Solorzano (Consortium Office) and a facilitator Nadia Manning-Thomas.
This report refers to the workshop which was held on October 21-25, 2013 at ILRI Campus in Nairobi, Kenya. The workshop involved a variety of sessions which made use of presentations, card exercises, group work and discussions to facilitate the engagement of the participants in sharing, learning, discussing and planning around CapDev in CGIAR. This report provides an overview of the workshop sessions, focusing mainly on the key discussion topics, results and next steps.
The purpose of Working with Smallholders handbook is to enable the development of more sustainable, resilient and productive supply chains for agribusinesses and to illustrate the substantial development impact. Smallholder farmers are both an opportunity and a challenge for food and agribusiness companies. The predominance of smallholders in many frontier and emerging markets makes them an integral part of agribusiness supply chains. Many firms source from smallholders or are actively seeking to source from them. Calls for fairer, more inclusive supply chains will hasten this trend.
Farmers in Asia like to grow cassava because the crop will tolerate long dry periods and poor soils, and will produce reasonable yields with little inputs. Most farmers realize, however, that cassava production on slopes can cause severe erosion, while production without fertilizer inputs may lead to a decline in soil productivity. Research has shown that cassava yields can be maintained for many years with adequate application of fertilizers, and that there are various ways to reduce erosion.
The aim of this study was to investigate the vulnerabilities of women involved in a bean value chain development intervention at the Maendeloe Innovation Platform in Eastern DRC. Specifically, the paper first discusses the roles of women and men in the value chain, what production resources and benefits they access and control, the role of the IP as a vehicle for women’s empowerment, and identifies women’s gender needs. Secondly, the paper identifies women’s vulnerabilities, and the capacities that the IP could build on, to support their participation in bean value chain development