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The Africa Biosciences Challenge Fund (ABCF) seeks applicants with innovative ideas for research projects (up to 12 months) aligned with national, regional or continental agricultural development priorities. ABCF is fellowship program that develops capacity for agricultural biosciences research in Africa and supports research projects that ultimately contribute towards increasing food and nutritional security and / or food safety in Africa. Applicants must be scientists or graduate students affiliated with a NARI or African University, and conducting research in the areas of food and nutritional security or food safety in Africa. Closing date for applications: March 31st 2015.

"The EU-funded project JOLISAA coordinated by CIRAD, France; the Prolinnova international network hosted by ETC Foundation, Netherlands; the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS); the AusAID-funded project Food System Innovation for Food Security (FSIFS) and other partners are to meet in May 2013to jointly discuss approaches to enhance knowledge-to-action linkages among actors in agricultural innovation systems in Africa. During WAIA, a workshop on Agricultural Innovation Systems in Africa (AISA) will take place, preceded by an Eastern Africa Farmer Innovation Fair to showcase the achievements of individual and groups of smallholder farmers in improving their farming and their livelihoods. "

"Contrary to conventional economic theories, the relationship between income growth and agricultural employment is extremely diverse, even among regions starting from similar levels of development, such as Asia and Africa. Due to its labor-intensive green revolution and strong farm-nonfarm linkages, Asia's development path is mostly characterized by fast growth with relatively slow agricultural exits. In contrast to Asia, urban biased policies, low rural population density, and high rates of population growth have led a number of African countries down a path of slow economic growth with surprisingly rapid agricultural exits. Despite this divergence both continents now face daunting employment problems. Asia appears to be increasingly vulnerable to rising inequality, slower job creation, and shrinking farm sizes, suggesting that Asian governments need to refocus on integrating smallholders and lagging regions into increasingly commercialized rural and urban economies. Africa, in contrast, has yet to achieve its own green revolution, which would still be a highly effective tool for job creation and poverty reduction. However, the diversity of its endowments and its tighter budget constraints mean that agricultural development strategies in Africa need to be highly context specific, financially sustainable, and more evidence- based"

"The Africa Lead database features an extensive listing of upcoming trainings and open education resources relevant to anyone interested in food security in Africa. It is relevant for government officials, farm leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, and policy leaders in agriculture. The courses and resources include materials from African institutions, training providers, and relevant university, government, and non-governmental organizations from around the world."

The REDD+ Monitoring, and Measurement, Reporting and Verification workshop "Training the Trainers" will be held in Abidjan, Ivory Coast from 6-10 February 2017, and will cover Francophone Africa. The workshop is jointly organized by GFOI partners who include World Bank FCPF, FAO/UN-REDD, Wageningen University, and GOFC-GOLD. It is the last in the series of four regional workshops, and will be held in French. The aim of the workshop is to demonstrate the use available training materials and tools covering topics including designing and implementing a national forest inventory, calculating emissions from forest degradation, the use of remote sensing change-detection tools to for deforestation monitoring, and generating IPCC compliant data. As part of the GOFC-GOLD partnership, START supported the training by facilitating the participation of two GOFC-GOLD Networks from Africa-the West Africa Regional Network (WARN) and the Miombo Land Use Land Change Network-in a similar training in September 2016. http://start.org/programs/gofc-gold For additional information on the program, please contact Senay Habtezion at shabtezion@start.org.

The Africities Summit is a meeting point for Africa's Local Authorities, organized every three years by United Cities and Local Governments of Africa (UCLG Africa). The 2015 edition will take place between the 29 November and 3 December, in Johannesburg, South Africa. Within this framework, UCLG will co-organize six sessions with African elected officials and experts in partnership with UCLGA, Metropolis and many other institutions including the African Union, UNECA, UN Habitat, UNDP, UNISDR, ILO and the South African Cities Network.

"IT News Africa-. The mobile application space is set to boom across Africa, as enterprises and developers lead the world in bringing to market unique mobile applications suited to a developing market. There are several reasons for this - crucially, Africa is a mobile continent. Mobile devices are becoming smarter, faster and more affordable; smartphone adoption is growing by around 15% year on year across the continent, and mobile bandwidth has become better and more affordable."

JICA launched the Initiative for Food and Nutrition Security in Africa recently at a side event of the sixth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD Ⅵ), held in Africa for the first time. The initiative, abbreviated as IFNA, aims to improve nutrition in Africa, with a particular focus on the region south of the Sahara Desert, which is said to have some 220 million undernourished people.It is also said that nearly 800 million people in the world are chronically undernourished. What's more, some 159 million children ages 5 and under reportedly are stunted.

"Twenty finalists; 10 for each category of the Africa-wide Women and Young Professionals in Science Competitions, 'Feeding 1 Billion in Africa in a Changing World', will compete for the top five places in each competition on 15-16 July 2013. The winners will be announced during the FARA General Assembly from 17-20 July 2013, in Accra, Ghana. The full papers of all 45 semi-finalists will be published in the third volume of 'Agricultural Innovations for Sustainable Development: Contributions from the 2012/2013 African Women and Young Professionals in Science Competitions'. Click the links to view the final programme and read the abstracts."

Europe-Africa Research & Innovation News n°9 - April 2014 [Delegation of the European Union to the African Union] In this edition: · Call for EU-SA Twinning Activities in Marine Sciences and Raw Materials · ERAfrica announces outcome of first call · Engaging SME's in EU-Africa STI Research Cooperation Language EN

"This report highlights the great potential of the agribusiness sector in Africa by drawing on experience in Africa as well as other regions. This evidence demonstrates that good policies, a conducive business environment, and strategic support from governments"

L'initiative Tuning Africa II vise à encourager l'élaboration d'une proposition relative à un système de crédit africain pour renforcer la mobilité des étudiants, la flexibilité du travail et harmoniser l'enseignement supérieur à travers le continent.

The key messages in this brief are as follows: 1) Engineering can help Africa unlock its huge potential for economic growth and development and make faster progress toward the Millennium Development Goals. 2) However, there is a serious lack of engineering capacity in Africa and heavy reliance on imported expertise in engineering. 3) Higher education institutions need to change their approach to teaching engineering so that graduates are creative problem-solvers. Engineering courses also need to be oriented towards market and development needs. 4) Women are under-represented in engineering education, constituting less than 10 percent of the student population in Ghana, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe in 2010. 5) Few African countries have established a robust accreditation system. In addition to improving national accreditation, regional accreditation of engineering professionals should be encouraged so that engineers have greater mobility within Africa. 6) A proposed World Bank initiative, the Partnership for Skills in Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology (PASET) will build capacity for technical, vocational and higher education in African countries.

"Africa urgently needs adequate number of quality agricultural graduates to actualize her potential in Agriculture. However, for this to be achieved, Tertiary Agricultural Education (TAE) stakeholders in the continent must work closely to leverage on their respective strengths. Pedagogy pic One of the participants of pedagogy training receives a certificate during a training workshop held in Nairobi, Kenya. In pursuit of the above objective, the African Network for Agriculture, Agroforestry and Natural Resources Education (ANAFE) is implementing a programme titled 'The Strengthening Africa's Strategic Agricultural Capacity for Impact on Development (SASACID)' which focusses on supporting TAE institutions in Africa to produce agricultural graduates with the right knowledge, skills and attitudes suited for the agricultural sector."

"The Association for the Development of Education in Africa (ADEA) is a forum for policy dialogue, composed of all the Ministers of Education in Africa and 14 development partners. Established in 1988 initially as a framework for better coordination among development agencies, it has come to represent a genuine partnership between African Ministries of Education and their development partners. It has also developed into a network of policy-makers, educators and researchers, and, based on its capacity to foster policy dialogue, a catalyst for educational reform. Since its inception, ADEA has acted on processes that have had a profound impact on policy-making in Africa through policy dialogue supported with research and analytical work, capacity building, advocacy and networking. "

"The programme aims to trigger a seismic shift in development and delivery of agricultural education programmes in Africa. Africa urgently needs adequate number of quality agricultural graduates to actualize her potential in Agriculture. However, for this to be achieved, Tertiary Agricultural Education (TAE) stakeholders in the continent must work closely to leverage on their respective strengths."

The summit is organized by CCARDESA, SADC and Agriculture Research Council (ARC-South Africa) and co-hosted by Department of Agriculture Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) in South Africa.

eLearning Africa is the key networking event for ICT enhanced education and training in Africa. As the largest annual conference of its kind, the three-day event is a must for those wanting to develop multinational and cross-industry partnerships and contacts whilst enhancing their knowledge, expertise and abilities. In 2015, eLearning Africa is being hosted by the Ethiopian Ministry of CIT at the African Union Conference Centre.

HLPD' is short for EU-Africa High Level Policy Dialogue Platform on Science, Technology and Innovation (STI). Senior officials from African and EU countries use this platform to discuss research and innovation policies. They aim to formulate and implement long-term priorities to strengthen bi-regional STI cooperation, in the framework of the Joint Africa-EU Strategy (JAES).

WYG and Natural Resources Institute (NRI) are pleased to launch the call for concept notes for the Sustainable Agricultural Intensification Research and Learning Programme in sub-Saharan Africa (SAIRLA) research opportunity. SAIRLA is a five-year programme, from 2015 to 2020, which will commission research and facilitate learning to understand different ways of achieving Sustainable Agricultural Intensification (SAI) and their developmental implications. Its key focus is on assessing how SAI can be promoted in ways that enable women and poorer smallholders in Africa to participate in and benefit from agricultural development through SAI approaches. SAIRLA's research projects will generate new evidence and decision-making support tools to help decision makers create an enabling environment for poorer smallholder farmers, especially women and youth, to engage in Sustainable Agricultural Intensification.