How can so many people be hungry when farmers produce enough food, at least in theory, to feed every person on the planet?
The answers are complex and involve everything from American farm politics and African corruption to war, poverty, climate change and drought, which is now the single most common cause of food shortages on the planet. more
Across Africa, new technologies are being joined with local customs to strengthen the continent's infrastructure and economy
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To make information on improving agriculture accessible for small scale farmers Avallain E4D is refining the "Info Station". It consists of the XO hardware, better known as the "$100 laptop", enhanced with bandwidth-controlled mobile Internet access, solar energy power and a custom software set based on the Ubuntu OS.
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The following text formed the base of Avallain's presentation at eLearnig Africa 2009)
In the context of our so-far successful Organic Farming information system "Infonet-Biovision", we have reached the critical phase of ensuring effective dissemination to the target audience, small scale farmers in rural Kenya.
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Knowledge about the condition and trend of African soils is highly fragmented and dated. There is an urgent need for accurate, up-to-date and spatially referenced soil information to support agriculture in Africa. This coincides with developments in technologies that allow for accurate collection and prediction of soil properties. The Africa Soil Information Service (AfSIS) will develop a practical, timely, cost-effective, soil health surveillance service to map soil conditions, set a baseline for monitoring changes, and provide options for improved soil and land management. more
NAIROBI, Apr 10 (IPS) - Mobile phones are being used to diagnose and treat crop diseases that cause massive losses to farmers, presenting an opportunity to increase yields as location-specific information about disease threats is made available. more
Send a Cow runs sustainable agricultural programmes in nine countries in Africa to help small-scale farmers overcome poverty and malnutrition. We were founded in 1988 by a group of UK farmers who sent cows to families in post-conflict Uganda.
Royal Horticultural Society Campaign for School Gardening
Plant Scientists Investigate: lessons and activities for schools and gardens
In recent years the mobile phone has emerged as the main modern communications link for rural areas of Africa. From 2002 to 2007, the number of Kenyans using cellphones grew almost tenfold to reach about a third of the population... more
The latest technology is enabling villagers to bypass middlemen and find out the prices their crops will command. more
Under the partnership with international nonprofit Unitus, the foundation will lend financial support to Jamii Bora Trust, a microfinance institution in Kenya.
Jamii Bora Trust will use the funding to extend its reach into small farming communities and develop new microfinance products for rural farmers, according to Whole Foods Planet.
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Efforts to improve agriculture in Kenya often miss the mark by targeting men instead of women. One woman spent 20 years organizing female farmers to share investments and training. Now men are joining too, and the women's work is paying off.
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The U.N.'s World Food Program will spend $1 billion buying food for the hungry this year, up $230 million from 2007.
Now the organization is trying to reach beyond simply handing out sacks of Western grain to help feed emaciated children. It wants to stimulate farmers to produce more — and replace those shipments from U.S. and other agribusinesses — by providing a reliable market for their local crops.
The WFP is mounting this new effort in 21 countries, mostly in Africa, against the backdrop of a global food crisis with many causes, among them Africa's long-running failure to feed itself. But experts say still more will be needed for a turnaround in African agriculture.
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In collaboration with Gates Foundation and IDE, IDEO created a Human Centered Design toolkit. This resource was created to help organizations working with smallholder farmers better understand the needs of the farmers and design appropriate tools, technologies, programs, or services for and with them.
Please feel free to download the toolkit and share your comments about it here.
Elephants in Kenya are sending text messages to warn wildlife rangers that they are heading for the crops of neighbouring villages. more
The unlikely story of Kibera's first "organic" farm - its only farm of any scale - has its roots in the chaos that gripped Kenya at the start of the year. more
Big horticultural farmers are accused of diverting river water for irrigation. details
Destruction of the woodland by rampant illegal settlement, logging and charcoal burning threatens severe damage to Kenya's economy with an impact on energy, tourism, agriculture and water supply to cities and industry. more
To read about how the kwa mukonza self-help group built a sand dam and
a demonstration shamba follow the link
http://www.excellentdevelopment.com/news_detail.php?id=98
African Agriculture is the first of several Africa-related websites
to be launched in early 2007 by Africa News Network. Each of them
will deal with a particular theme of African development or economic
activity. Trade, renewable energy and environmental issues in Africa
are just three examples of planned website themes. Links will be
made available to these other thematic websites as they are
launched. It is hoped that you will visit some of these other sites
and that you will find them interesting and useful to your keeping
up to date with news and analysis on issues important to the
development of Africa. It is planned that each of these websites
will have its own email update service for busy professionals who
prefer to keep up with the sites' contents this way rather than by
surfing the sites.
