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Bean threshers transforming post-harvest and food safety handling in Kenya
Boaz Waswa, Josey Kamanda, Justin Mabeya, Eileen Nchanji, David Karanja, Patricia Onyango, Owen Kimani She wonders why she has to go through the tedious ritual of hitting the bean harvest using sticks to put food on her family’s table! “My hands are hard and blistered because I have to use
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Cultural expectations in women’s economic empowerment: Case of women and men farmers in Uganda
By Eileen Nchanji, Grace Nanyonjo, and Isaac Muggaga Common beans are a valuable crop across sub-Saharan Africa, contributing to food nutrition security and income for smallholder farmers. It was considered a subsistent crop mainly grown by women for food; with the excess sold to get money for other household needs.
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New common bean varieties to benefit African women and children
Good progress has been made in the first 12 months of an innovative project linking The UWA Institute of Agriculture researchers and east African partners to breed new, fast-cooking common bean (Phaseolus spp) varieties biofortified with iron and zinc. This Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR)-funded project is a
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Benin joins PABRA to introduce sustainable bean research for development in West Africa
Did you know that almost 80 percent of Benin’s 11.2 million people earn a living from agriculture, the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) states? Despite being a subsistence sector, agriculture contributes about 34 percent to this west African nation’s Gross Domestic Product. It is for the
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Gender and Nutrition considerations in Demand Led Breeding: Experiences from Rwanda
Annuarite Uwera, Eileen Nchanji, Clare Mukankusi, and Patricia Onyango Participatory plant breeding is not new in Rwanda. Its history can be traced between 1988 to 1990 when local experts drawn from the pool of older women carried out the process (Sperling 1992; Sperling et al. 1993). On-farm results demonstrated farmers’
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Demand – led Breeding through a Gender lens: Experiences from Zimbabwe
Bruce Mutari, Patience Mashiri, Eileen Nchanji, Clare Mukankusi, and Patricia Onyango Discussions on gender integration in conventional breeding are not new. These talks started in the 1980s when women farmers were integrated into on-station and on-farm breeding activities (Sperling, Loevinsohn, & Ntabomvura, 2008). Currently, gender integration has shifted from mainly
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