Ethiopia’s agriculture is complex, involving substantial variation in crops grown across the country’s regions and ecologies. And although there has been significant growth in the cultivation of cereal crops over the last decade, by international standards, yields are low, and overall production is highly susceptible to weather shocks, such as …
Farmers’ access to seeds is the focus of a new project ‘Access to seeds: From emergencies to seed system development’, led by Ola Westengen and funded by the Research Council of Norway (RCN).
Seeds are vital for food security and are a fundamental asset for the majority of rural communities in …
Africa Center of Excellence for Climate Smart Agriculture and Biodiversity Conservation (Climate SABC) hosted by Haromaya University is aiming to train efficient agricultural and climate change experts in Africa.
The Center financed by the World Bank came to be operational in 2017 and is currently teaching 51 students drawn from Ethiopia, …
The African and Asian Resilience in Disaster Insurance Scheme (ARDIS) was launched on 18 January in order to help African and Asian farmers affected by climate disasters.
The scheme will target up to 4mn people, particularly focusing on women and their families, in areas of drought such as Kenya, Malawi, Mali, …
Malawi’s government has given in to mounting pressure to recognise the importance of locally grown and saved crop seeds, as well as commercially produced varieties, as it revises the country’s farm policies.
In a meeting in the capital this month, representatives of non-governmental organisations told Erica Maganga, principal secretary in the …
Malawi’s Parliamentary Committee on Women Caucus, said it supports the current research on Genetically Modified (GM) crops in a bid to avert another food crisis in Malawi.
The Committee’s stand comes amid heavy debate among the public on whether the Malawi should embrace GM crops surpassing hybrid seed for increased food …
Bolstered by a solid and functional biosafety framework, Malawi is one of the few countries in Africa poised to move forward in commercializing genetically modified crops, with cotton, cowpea and banana now in field trials.
The Biosafety Act was passed in 2002, biosafety regulations in 2007 and the National Biotechnology and …
African plant and animal disease experts held a crisis meeting in Harare last week on the spiraling fall armyworm outbreak which is destroying maize crops and posing a major threat to food security and agricultural trade in east, central and southern Africa.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation together with the …
Nigeria ranks 37 in its commitment to ending hunger and malnutrition among its people, the Hunger and Nutrition Commitment Index – Africa (HANCI-Africa) has indicated. The rankings, produced by the Institute of Development Studies (UK) with the African Union’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), was released on the website …
B4FA Fellow Samuel Hinneh reports: A new project that aims to provide farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa with stress-tolerant maize varieties has been launched to help the region boost food security. The Stress Tolerant Maize for Africa (STMA) project will apply conventional breeding techniques to develop maize varieties and hybrids capable …
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