Forty-five-year-old Rebecca Ezekiel is a farmer in the Song Local Government Area (LGA) of Adamawa State in North-East Nigeria. A wife of a farmer and mother of 10, Rebecca grows rice, soybean, maize, and groundnut, but she is not a mere farmer. Having been trained in good agricultural practices (GAP) by the USAID-funded Feed-the-Future Nigeria Integrated Agriculture Activity (IAA), Rebecca
The Democratic Republic of Congo Minister of Agriculture, His Excellency Désiré M’zinga Birihanze, has announced the commencement of the eagerly anticipated Agenda for the Transformation of Agriculture in the Democratic Republic of Congo (ATA-DRC) Program. He disclosed this while speaking with national and international media at a press conference co-organized with the ATA-DRC implementing partner, IITA. HE Birihanze highlighted the actions,
IITA, in collaboration with the Alliance Bioversity International – CIAT, launched a project in partnership with Tanzania’s Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). The project aims to restore and increase the productivity and profitability of key food and oilseed crops and enhance market access for rural women and young farmers in Tanzania to mitigate the negative impact
Danny Pelletier, Key Program Officer for Cuso International, visited IITA headquarters, with James Odey, Business Development Manager, on 4 May. They visited the Institute to discuss further areas of collaboration to address climate change issues. Cuso is a Canadian Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) working with other partners to tackle poverty and inequality. With an existing relationship with some of IITA’s hubs in Africa, the
STIHL, a company specializing in agricultural equipment production for smallholder farmers, is working on bringing affordable farming mechanization closer to the end-users in Africa. Hence, in partnership with C.WOERMANN and IITA, STIHL organized a hands-on training program on agricultural equipment usage and maintenance. The training, which took place at the IITA headquarters on 11 May, assembled farmers and agro-input dealers from various parts
Arusha, Tanzania, 23 May 2022. After a two-year lockdown, an international team of banana researchers convenes for a three-day workshop in Arusha to continue forging a path to speed up the breeding process and deliver new bananas to East African farmers. Together with the Hon. Hussein Bashe, Tanzanian Minister of Agriculture, the project partners will also celebrate the release in Tanzania
Bees are one of the most hard-working creatures on earth. Bees do so much for our planet, including pollinating flowers, fruit and food crops, and even some trees. They produce the nutritious sweet syrup called honey and contribute to the earth’s biodiversity and ecosystem stability. Bees could constitute a source of livelihood for anyone who learns to keep bees for
Plantain (Musa spp.) is a staple food crop and a key source of income supporting the livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). However, pests and diseases, synthetic chemicals, and climate variation threaten its production and productivity. A recent study titled “Subterranean Microbiome Affiliations of Plantain (Musa spp.) under Diverse Agroecologies of West and Central Africa” published in Microbial