Timbuktu Chronicles

Okuafo Foundation has been working with over 600 'rural farmer leaders' to produce more food to feed the future. Reaching up to 30,000 smallholder farmers.

From the World Resources Institute:

Kilishi Delivered is the sole online distributor & marketer of Albarkah Foods Kilishi products, for delivery to consumers across Canada and the US. We deliver great tasty Kilishi, crafted to perfection in Canada from grass fed beef, right to the front doors of our customers in no time.

Omugwo is an online care giving service company, where you can find the most professional and reliable caregivers to meet the needs and match the expectations of your entire family. We provide you with the most reliable, professional and experienced caregivers in Nigeria, whom have been trained and properly vetted.For an understanding of the cultural practice 'Omugwo' listen here

From ShelterTech Kenya Accelerator:
The ShelterTech Kenya Accelerator Program, is the first kind in Africa. It has been supporting 30 businesses working to address challenges in affordable housing in Kenya. The event culminated in a Demo Day on May 24th 2019. 7 businesses are finalizing with investors on investment.

From Inside Africa:

CMU-Africa's inaugural Meeting of the Minds research symposium was held from 15th – 16th March 2019 in Kigali, Rwanda. The symposium was organized in partnership with the Mastercard Foundation Scholars Program under the theme: “Harnessing Africa’s potential through research”, to explore ways in which academia can catalyze Africa’s innovation economy through research with a specific focus on STEM innovations that can address problems and opportunities in Africa.

JR Biotek Foundation was established to educate, train, inspire and empower Africa's present and future scientists and leaders to tackle challenges in Africa. With the help and contribution of scientists from the renowned Department of Plant Sciences, University of Cambridge, we develop and provide world-class scientific laboratory training and other initiatives aiming to foster research and innovation in tertiary education institutions and national research institutes across Africa.

Tedd George, writing in Global Trade Review (GTR):
There is no lack of data about Côte d’Ivoire’s cocoa farmers: better management of this data is the key to unlocking real benefits for them, writes Tedd George, chief narrative officer at Kleos Advisory.

Côte d’Ivoire produces around 45% of the world’s cocoa (an estimated 2.2 million tonnes in 2018/19) and the value chains that manage the cocoa flows are highly complex. There are numerous players, from the local buyers (known as pisteurs) to the grinders, trading houses and offtakers. But within these value chains the country’s 600,000 cocoa farmers are essentially invisible. Cocoa appears miraculously at the start of the chain – delivered to a field warehouse or grinder with little indication of where it was produced or by whom. At least three quarters of Ivorian cocoa production is not traced back to its source, with most being sold in bulk shipments to offtakers by local aggregators (intermediares)...[more]

Alexander O. Onukwue reports:
Twenty-one-year old Orevaoghene Ahia speaks good English and writes tons of code in python. Her mum, an Isoko woman bred in Nigeria’s Niger Delta area, is fluent in three languages but favours pidgin English for conversations with family, friends and customers. Though Ahia’s pidgin isn’t as intense as her mum’s waffi dialect, she regards it an indispensable feature of her formative years.

So when Kelechi Ogueji, 23, suggested a pidgin-to-English machine translation project, acceptance was easy. “It’s insane that most technologies we build these days are for very high-resource language speakers,” Ahia tells me...[more]

From Grid Exponential: Arvind Gupta, Founder and Managing Director @ IndieBio, talks about Science & Design at BioArgentina, the largest biotech event in Argentina, organized by the Argentine Biotech Chamber

From the World Bank:
Fatoumata started her food processing business with just $260. Today, her business produces approximately 16 metric tons of dried pineapple annually which she sells in numerous gas stations, supermarkets and shops across the country. Recently, the West Africa Agricultural Productivity Program (WAAPP) provided her with an electric dryer which will allow the company to boost their dried fruit production capacity from 6 kg to 80 kg per week, to directly employ 15 women, and to be competitive in regional and international markets.

From ProForest:
The APOI national team in Ghana are supporting sustainable palm oil by training extension officers from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture in Best Management Practices. These practices will help farmers to obtain a greater yield and therefore reduce the need to convert land for palm oil cultivation.

Baba Epega founder of EMC3 is the driver of the Ogun State Motorsports project being overseen by Driven :
Masterplan for a motorsports and leisure venue in Nigeria. Driven International are pleased to be working with brand and marketing agency EMC3 Nigeria, on behalf of Ogun State to design a new motorsport development near Abeokuta...[more]

Farmshine is a global agriculture platform where farmers, buyers and service providers can trade on mutually beneficial terms.

Food Business Africa reports:
The Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union in Ethiopia is set to commission its first coffee roasting and packaging complex at Gelan town in Oromia Regional state.The coffee roasting complex worth 50 million Br (US$1.5m) of investment will have a capacity of roasting, grinding and packaging 120Kg of coffee an hour...[more]

Natural Nigerian is a 100% female owned business. Owned and run by a qualified chemist, Natural Nigerian has been instrumental in building the Natural community in Nigeria.

Greenage Technologies is an indigenous manufacturer of smart solar Inverters in Nigeria. Our technology makes our inverters a unique breed of machines greatly adapted to the Nigerian climate and weather. Our rich African content creates an enabling environment for the growing renewable energy community; providing reliable and affordable solar Inverter systems with the best reachable after sales service.via

Do you know that a large percentage of actors in the production and processing of cassava in Nigeria is made up of poor rural farmers who are mostly women? Also 40% of the cassava they produce waste before it hits the market. This is a result of lack of adequate access to market and needed technologies. Alphotazi Farms installs modular processing plants, closer to the farmers to enable faster and easier access to needed technology. This helps farmers save time, energy and raw material, while we also help them drive sales through our e-commerce platform. We are currently focused of processing Garri and we are helping about 100 farmers create more value monthlyvia

From NOVA's Secret Life of Scientists and Engineers:
Bisi Ezerioha takes things apart as a kid and puts them together as an adult so they'll go VROOM! Bisi Ezerioha is the CEO and chief engineer of his company Bisimoto Engineering. A chemical engineer by training, he was a pharmaceutical researcher for years before he decided to bring his mad engineering skills to the pursuit of creating ridiculously fast cars. His automotive creations have appeared in numerous films and video games. And oh yeah, he drives really fast... on the track.