Looking Behind the Africa Trial Sites Network

While Asia and Latin America have benefitted from the Green Revolution, agricultural yields in Africa have increased little over the last half century.  This gap is due, in part, to the current state of African research systems. Improved systems will lead to increased yields, a solution that African governments and donors already recognize.

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Realizing a Dream: Introducing AGCommons Director Laban MacOpiyo

There are many reasons why we choose to follow a particular career path. Sometimes it is a childhood dream that takes shape watching a movie or reading a favorite book; sometimes a spark is ignited in a school classroom; sometimes it is a desire to make a difference in a community; sometimes we adopt someone [...]

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Weathering the drought – An Interview with Andy Farrow

It never rains but it pours, even during a drought. At least that’s what Andy Farrow must have thought when his project’s drought-tolerant bean seeds didn’t thrive due to insufficient rain. And yes, drought-tolerant bean seeds are designed to withstand droughts; but there are droughts and there are droughts. And the drought that hit many [...]

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It’s No Longer Business as Usual – An Interview with Peter Ndunda

When Peter Ndunda attended the recent AfricaGIS Conference in Kampala, Uganda, he was a man on a mission. He wanted to find out how geospatial technology and information could help grassroots communities in Sub-Saharan Africa. As an AGCommons ambassador, he knows that the initiative he represents has a potentially huge role to play in the [...]

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Seeing is believing – An Interview with Sibiry Traore

West African smallholder farmers are witnessing unpredictable changes in their land. Some are noticing that their soil is not as fertile as it used to be, and in some places, where there was once soil, there are now barren patches – useless for planting anything but uncertainty and fear for their future livelihoods.

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Mobile phones fight disease and poverty – An interview with Whitney Gantt

At the beginning of this year, three different banana diseases were attacking East Africa, devastating farms around the region and exacerbating the prevailing food crisis. To help prevent the spread of such diseases, it is vital that smallholder farmers have access to comprehensive information about crop conditions in the region. As it is, such information [...]

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