Africa's Young Farmers Seeding the Future

Cell phones are working for West African farmers

By IPS Correspondents
While many farmers in West Africa are still struggling to get information on crops and farming techniques, it seems as if more readily available information ... on commodity prices and the weather ... are reaching even subsistence farmers in the region.

Invest oil money in infrastructure: IFAD

By IPS Correspondents
Concerns about oil money not reaching the poorest of the poor in West Africa still abound, but NGOs say issues can still be addressed. Steven Schonberger, the West and Central Africa regional economist for IFAD, told Tinus de Jager that oil money put into infrastructure could boost the agriculture in the region.

Land is the issue in West Africa

By IPS Correspondents
Tinus de Jager interviews Steven Schonberger, IFAD’s Regional Economist for West and Central Africa, on the problems and success in establishing good farming practices in the region.
The current global food system is unsustainable and does not allow for farmers to live lives of dignity, says Sameer Dossani, ActionAid International advocacy coordinator. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

Time for a More Sustainable Global Food System

By Busani Bafana
It is vitally important that governments and civil society organisations start transitioning to a more sustainable global food system in order to achieve lasting development. 
Jane Karuku, the new AGRA boss, dreams of seeing smallholder farmers become the drivers in Africa

Q&A: Women Farmers Are Key to a Food-Secure Africa

By Busani Bafana
While women constitute the majority of food producers, processors and marketers in Africa, their role in the agricultural sector still remains a minor one because of cultural and social barriers.

Cashew Producers’ Pain Is Intermediaries’ Gain in Senegal

By Koffigan E. Adigbli
Cashew nut growers in the southern Senegalese region of Casamance are complaining bitterly that intermediaries are cutting them out of a fair share of the profits.
Farmers in the Democratic Republic of Congo are embracing a new variety of cassava. Credit: Credit: André Thiel/Flickr

DRC Cassava Farmers Reap Rewards from New Methods

By Badylon Kawanda Bakiman
Farmers in the Democratic Republic of Congo are embracing a new variety of cassava which, in combination with improved agricultural techniques, easily outperforms yields from other popular types of this important crop.
Olivier Forgha Koumbou’s son waters his thriving farm in Santa, in Cameroon’s North West region. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

Cameroonian Farmer Won’t Let Low Rainfall Defeat Him

By - - and Ngala Killian Chimtom
Olivier Forgha Koumbou washes some freshly picked carrots in a small brook and eats them with relish. His thriving farm in Santa, in Cameroon’s North West region, looks like a miracle in the midst of surrounding farms where carrots, lettuce, potatoes and leeks have withered and died.
Farmer Selinah Mncwango is proud of her traditional sorghum seeds. Credit: Kristin Palitza/IPS

South Africa’s Smallholders Lose Battle for Seed Security

By Kristin Palitza
In an almost ceremonial manner, Selinah Mncwango opens her big plastic bag and pulls out several smaller packets, each filled with different types of seeds: sorghum, bean, pumpkin, and maize. They are her pride, her wealth, the "pillar of my family," says the farmer from a village in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province.
Thomas Essuman says Ghanaian fisherfolk know that using poison, dynamite and illegal nets to catch fish is doing long-term damage. Credit: Jessica McDiarmid/IPS

Ghanaian Fisherfolk Blasting Their Way to Finding Fish

By - - and Jessica McDiarmid
Explosives, high-watt light bulbs, monofilament nets, and poison: these are a few methods fisherfolk are using to catch ever-dwindling fish stocks off Ghana’s shores.
Emmanuel Kargbo, a 26-year-old farmer, pushes a motorised soil tiller recently given to his farming cooperative. Credit: Damon Van der Linde/IPS

Listening to the Hum of Tilling Machinery in the Sierra Leone Countryside

By Damon van der Linde

In the eastern Sierra Leonean community of Lambayama, rice paddies are carved far into the landscape before being abruptly halted by distant hills. Aside from a paved road that draws a grey line through the green, swampy valley, it looks much as it did a century ago.

Sam Kojo, chief fisherman of a village in western Ghana, says an influx of seaweed has crippled the fishing industry for months. Credit: Jessica McDiarmid/IPS

Western Ghana’s Fisherfolk Starve Amid Algae Infestation

By - - and Jessica McDiarmid
Sam Kojo stands in a thigh-high pile of brown seaweed that blankets a beach in western Ghana. Behind him, a decomposing mound of Sargassum stretches down the shore past the fishing village of Beyin.

‘The Land is Never Wrong’, Says Togolese Farmer

By - - and Noël Kokou Tadégnon
Awuissa Walla has no regrets over choosing farming as a profession. He earned a degree in agronomy a decade ago, and borrowing money from friends, set himself up on an 18-hectare plot at Badja, some 50 kilometres from Lomé, the Togolese capital.

Tired of Odd Jobs in the City, He Is Farming in His Old Guinean Village

By - - and Moustapha Keita
Like many rural youth, Abdoulaye Soumah spent a few years in Conakry, trying his hand at various jobs in the big city. But he has since returned to his home village, transforming a seven-hectare plot of land inherited from his parents into a model of success.
Onion producers in Niger face huge problems selling their crop because the market is saturated. Credit: Sustainable Sanitation/CC BY 2.0

Niger Onion Producers in Tears Over Market Glut

By Ousseini Issa
Bitterness is written all over Boureïma Hamado's face as he prepares to return home after selling his onion crop at the Katako market in the Nigerien capital, Niamey. He's taken a big loss on the harvest.

Young Ivorians Fishing Big Profits out of Small Ponds

By Fulgence Zamblé
Mathieu Djessan looks over the four-hectare expanse of fish ponds with satisfaction. The aquaculture enterprise the 29-year-old runs here near the town of Tiassalé in southern Côte d'Ivoire is quickly proving profitable.

Chad Famine – Mothers Breaking Apart Anthills in Search of Food

By François Djékombé
"Only God knows what will happen to me and my children - for two months there's been nothing to eat. We're living like beggars," Henriette Sanglar, a mother of four in the Moursal quarter of the Chadian capital, N'Djamena, told IPS.

Senegal’s Investment in Rural Youth Bearing Fruit

By Koffigan E. Adigbli
Darou Ndoye is the sort of village young people cannot wait to leave in search of better prospects in the city or across the seas in Europe. But 40 youth working on 10 hectares of a 20-heactre farm here in western Senegal show how a little support goes a long way in creating rewarding work in rural Senegal.
Joaquina Xavier - who currently collects water from the river - in front of the new AQUAtap machine in her village. Credit: Louise Redvers/IPS

ANGOLA: Solar Panels Turning Dirty Water Clean

By Louise Redvers
The brightly painted old shipping container with solar panels on its roof and high-specification filtration devices inside looks out of place in this dusty Angolan village of Bom Jesus, 50 kilometres east of the capital Luanda.
Farmers

DR CONGO: Farmers’ Organisations Slam New Agriculture Law

By Emmanuel Chaco
Farmers' organisations in the Democratic Republic of Congo say the country's new Agriculture Law – enacted last December – could lead to many smallholder farmers losing their land.

Progress Towards a Food-Secure Africa

By Miriam Gathigah
A growing number of African countries are making significant progress towards eradicating extreme hunger and poverty. Ghana, Liberia, Malawi, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and South Africa are some of the countries that have made tremendous achievements towards achieving these goals.
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