Influential women from across Africa converged for a conference in Pretoria last week, as they called for greater land ownership rights.
The conference, hosted by the Habitat for Humanity’s Solid Ground Campaign in association with the Urban CSO Cluster of the Global Land Tool Network (GLTN) of UN-Habitat, focused on …
Sub-Saharan Africa has huge potential to become a global food basket, but it is far from being realised. The region is estimated to have 60% of the globally available and unexploited arable land yet it remains food deficient.
Even when arable land is cultivated, hurdles such as limited irrigation, small sized …
B4FA Fellow Lominda Afedraru reports:
There are efforts by scientists in agricultural sector in Uganda to breed key crops using conventional and biotechnology mechanism in a bid for farmers to grow crops which are resistant to pests and diseases and tolerant to drought to achieve improved yields.
Scientists from the National Agricultural …
Since his assumption of office in May 2015, President Muhammadu Buhari has repeated said that the nation’s economy must be diversified to, especially Agriculture which “must cease from being treated as development programme but be treated as business. Our goal will be to pursue government supported private sector agriculture value …
B4FA Fellow Michael Ssali writes:
Most of our farmers work on small plots of land and can be described as family farmers, smallholders or just peasants. This kind of farming provides employment to about 70 per cent of our adult population.
Typically a peasant farmer uses a hand hoe and a machete, …
A solution to help farmers to grow crops in dry areas or during stretches of drought may depend on breeding and cultivating plants that protect themselves with a thicker layer of leaf wax, a new study shows.
Sarah Feakins, a scientist at USC who has studied leaf wax in the context …
Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) suffers significant yield losses due to powdery mildew, a major fungal disease caused by Blumeria graminis f. sp. tritici (Bgt). The enhanced disease resistance1 (EDR1) gene plays a negative role in the defense response against powdery mildew in Arabidopsis thaliana, making EDR1 a target for improving …
The National Directorate of Employment (NDE) in collaboration with C. Hassan Consultancy Ltd. has commenced a refresher training of 400 unemployed youths in Kaduna state on agricultural skills for gainful employment.
The training, according to the Director-General of NDE, Dr. Nasiru M. Ladan is to impart on the trainees, skills such …
Food Evolution captured real problems experienced by real people who need real solutions. The global forces denying millions of smallholder farmers access to improved varieties may be ignorant to the fact that African smallholder farmers grow their own food crops and have no capacity to import food from other continents …
How to make farming attractive to young people is fast becoming a major talking point in development circles. In a context where farming populations are ageing and young people, especially young graduates, seem repelled by the drudgery and low technology associated with African farming, there is a sense that work …
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