This week, B4FA highlights computational biologist Geoffrey Siwo who is out to ensure that the ground-breaking gene-editing tool CRISPR will be available to all scientists everywhere in the world. He argues, “if scientists in Africa can read open-access papers about CRISPR but have no means to use it in experiments, they still can’t transform that …
In Cotonou, Benin, last week, more than 300 cassava scientists, farmers, government representatives and private-sector stakeholders met to attend the fourth International Cassava Conference, an event convened triennially by the Global Cassava Partnership for the 21st Century (GCP21). Among the topics covered were biological, molecular and genomic advances including DNA fingerprinting …
This week, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations released a 20-item list of interconnected actions to achieve Zero Hunger and help fix the world’s food and agricultural systems in accordance with Sustainable Development Agenda priorities. Titled Transforming food and agriculture to achieve the SDGs, the report suggests how …
Last week, we reported that the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given approval for the safety of Golden Rice, a genetically engineered biofortified crop that promises to help alleviate Vitamin A deficiency — a serious health concern in 250 million preschool-age children globally. According to an article …
Last week, we heard about the discovery of a second armyworm invasion in West Africa. This week, there’s hope on the horizon as we learn that 228 applications were received by the Fall Armyworm Tech Prize, recently launched by Nesta, Feed the Future, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), …
BREAKING NEWS: A new species of armyworm, Spodoptera eridania, has been positively identified this week in West and Central Africa. According to a press release by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), “[P]reliminary data show that the species is present in at least four countries in West and Central Africa, …
This week, at the meeting of the UN Economic Commission for Africa in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the Africa Centre for Economic Transformation (ACET) released a report on how African agriculture may be harnessed for the continent’s economic growth. The report assesses the states of African agriculture and suggests increased productivity …
From May 2-4, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) hosted the Global Symposium on Soil Pollution (GSOP18) in Rome, where experts met to discuss the latest data on the state of soil pollution and its effects on food security, environment and human health. At the meeting, the FAO released a …
This week in Libreville, Gabon, more than 100 African agriculturalists met to discuss lessons learned from inaugural Biennial Review (BR) Report on the implementation of the 2014 Malabo Declaration – an agreement to track progress on agricultural goals for the continent every two years starting in 2018, endorsed by African …
This week, agricultural experts are meeting in Arusha, Tanzania, to improve the productivity of bananas, a food staple and source of income for millions of Tanzanian and Ugandan smallholder farmers. The “Breeding Better Bananas” project – which convenes researchers from Tanzania, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Czech Republic, India, Kenya, Malaysia, South Africa, …
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