Category: Agriculture
African elders’ knowledge vital to climate-proof global crops
Village elders in Africa played a crucial role in a global seed-collecting project that aims to bolster food security in a changing climate. Through cross-breeding common crops with their wild relatives, scientists plan to create strains that are better able to cope with higher temperatures and extreme weather. The Crop Wild Relatives project, funded by […]
Kenya’s butterfly queen
Esther Kioko has gone from village girl to top insect scientist. Here she tells Geoffrey Kamadi about her journey so far. Like many of the children in the village where she grew up, Esther Kioko’s favourite pastime was chasing grasshoppers, praying mantises, and other bugs. The children would disembowel the hapless critters using acacia thorns, […]
This is how Nigeria plans to avoid Burkina Faso’s GM cotton curse
This growing season, farmers on more than 1,000 cotton farms across Nigeria are growing genetically-modified (GM) cotton under the watchful eyes of scientists. Come harvest, the scientists will compare the modified cotton with the traditional strains also grown on these farms, carefully evaluating the new strains in terms of their resistance to pest attacks, fibre […]
A new use for coffee-processing waste—but is it sustainable?
Waste from coffee processing could be used to clean polluting runoff from other industries, a group of Kenyan scientists has shown. But with the country’s coffee harvests dwindling, others wonder if it is worthwhile pursuing a technology based on a waning resource. Coffee is Kenya’s fourth greatest generator of foreign income after tourism, tea, and […]
ARV drugs in Ugandan pork a growing health concern
Mounting evidence that farmers in northern Uganda try to fatten up their pigs with antiretroviral drugs destined for humans with HIV has raised serious health concerns in the East African country. The practice could be putting many Ugandans at risk. Ugandans are the biggest pork-eaters in Africa, with each person on average consuming 3.5 kilograms […]
Genetics help solve puzzle of how goats spread through Africa
Eleven thousand years ago in the Middle East, goats became one of the first herbivores that humans domesticated. Since then, the horned livestock has spread across the world. But how domestic goats (Capra hircus) found their way to all corners of the African continent—where they are now an important source of meat and milk—remains poorly […]
Digging for gold in Africa’s garbage
Landfills—those smelly, polluted no-man’s lands of modern life—often contain useful raw materials. Recycling them for profit presents opportunities and challenges for Africa, Eman El-Sherbiny reports. Just a bus ride away from the shimmering Nile-side skyscrapers of central Cairo lies Hay el- Zabaleen. Known locally as Garbage City, it’s where the unwanted clothes, food and, all […]
In Kenya, tomato farming is a male affair
Smallholder tomato farming in Kenya remains dominated by older men despite efforts by the government NGOs to encourage women and youth into agriculture and to foster equality in land ownership, scientists have found. In Kenya, seven out of ten tomato growers are male according to a study conducted by a group of Nairobi-based scientists and […]
Getting watermelons to market in Benin
Watermelons are a popular fruit in Benin. But their profitability for market traders—95% of whom are women—is limited as a result of the country’s poor rural road network, a lack of storage facilities to stop melons from rotting, and the difficulty for traders to balance customer demand with supply. Sylvain Kpenavoun Chogou, an agronomist at […]
Helping little girls grow tall, one dead weevil at a time
Weevils create a horrible sight. They cause mould to grow which produces poisonous substances that can make people sick.” When I was a little girl, I could abandon a whole meal at the sight of an insect on my plate. My mother would do her best to make sure that our meals were kept away […]