February 2016 | IITA News

Picture of African farmers in the digital age story on Foreignaffairs.com

Online anthology “African farmers in the digital age” launched

A special edition anthology, published in partnership with Foreign Affairs, brings together the views of 20 leading thinkers on all aspects of food systems, smallholder farming, and the transformative opportunity presented by digital technology. An infographic explaining this process is available here. Co-curators Kofi Annan, Sir Gordon Conway, and Sam Dryden assert that “The combination…

SARD-SC rice component launches GEM parboiler facility for women processors

Grain quality enhancer, energy efficient and durable material (GEM) rice parboiling technologies were recently installed for women rice processors in the irrigated rice ecology of northern Benin Republic. The rice component of the Support to Agricultural Research for Development of Strategic Crops in Africa (SARD-SC) project in collaboration with AfricaRice and the National Institute of…

Picture of USAID delegation visiting the aflasafe and BIP facilities in Ibadan, Nigeria with IITA staff.

USAID delegation visits Aflasafe project at IITA-Ibadan

A delegation of three from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), IITA’s foremost donor and co-funding agency of the AgResults Aflasafe pilot project, recently concluded a field visit to IITA-Ibadan to better understand the Project and the planned Africa-wide commercialization of Aflasafe™. The one-day visit, which took place on 4 February, comprised a briefing…

Picture of Story about the first World Congress on Root and Tuber Crops on RTB.cgiar.org website.

Top six highlights from the first World Congress on Root and Tuber Crops

The first World Congress on Roots and Tuber Crops has come and gone, but the lessons from the convergence in Nanning, China linger. In a recent blog by Graham Thiele, Program Director, CGIAR Research Program on Roots, Tubers and Bananas (RTB) entitled “Six steps forward for root and tuber crops”. Thiele highlighted six key take-home…

Picture of Open Access and Open Data on CGIAR.org website

IITA adopts data and information management policy on Open Access

IITA has announced the development and adoption of a data and information management policy on Open Access, and has also instituted guiding principles detailing the roles and responsibilities of everyone involved to ensure compliance. The policy demonstrates the Institute’s commitment to research excellence and became fully functional recently. It also supports IITA’s strategic objectives to…

Picture of IITA Director General Nteranya Sanginga

DG tours Tanzania; shares new ambitions for IITA and agriculture in Africa

IITA Director General Nteranya Sanginga has just concluded a two-day visit to IITA’s Eastern Africa’s office in Tanzania where he met the Institute’s staff and shared his priority areas of focus for his second term as the head of the Institute. He said he had identified three areas that he was passionate about which had…

Picture of Training facilitator, Dr Jane Wright, talking to participants

Inqaba-IITA trains staff on phylogenetics

Inqaba biotec West Africa in collaboration with IITA organized an Introductory Phylogenetics Workshop on 24-29 January, at IITA, Ibadan. The workshop was attended by 15 laboratory scientists from various laboratories in Nigeria. It aimed to present the basic principles and techniques for understanding the evolution of genes and genomes. The steps required from checking a…

Picture of Group photograph of participants at the workshop

Ugandan Agric Ministry pioneer development of climate change mainstreaming guidelines

The Ugandan Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF), with support from IITA-led Policy Action for Climate Change Adaptation (PACCA) project, and USAID Feed the Future Enabling Environment for Agriculture (USAID-EEA), organized a national level stakeholder workshop to validate the recently developed Climate Change Mainstreaming Guidelines for the Agricultural Sector in Uganda. The validation…

Special feature: IITA long-term trials validate ISFM benefits

IITA researchers working together with other scientists have shown that food security, crop yields and farmers’ livelihoods; the resilience of cropping systems to climatic change impacts; and mitigation of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions derived from fertilizer or soil are significantly enhanced when Integrated Soil Fertility Management (ISFM) is practiced during production. To achieve these, stakeholders…

Picture of Participants of the biostatistics course and IITA staff in Kinshasa after the opening ceremony with the DRC Minister of Agriculture Representative

Biostatistics and SAS refresher courses organized at IITA-Kinshasa

Two statistics courses were organized for IITA staff and partners in DR Congo on 25 January to 5 February. The first―a refresher course on Statistical Analysis System (SAS), was organized for IITA-Kinshasa researchers. The training provided detailed hands-on exposure to the basic procedures for appropriate data analysis as well as the provision of SAS software…