Rural Development

The WB team were welcomed to Boromo (a province of Bales located two hours from Ouagadogou) by a team from Association La Voute Nubienne; a French non-governmental organization(NGO) with field offices in Burkina Faso. Their team is composed of 11 Burkinabes and a French team member, who trains masons to construct timber-free houses using the Nubian Vault technique.

A Nubian Vault house is made from locally available materials and is designed to use no wood. Because the ceiling is raised into a vault it keeps the living space significantly cooler than a typical box shaped house with a tin roof. This design originated from upper-Egypt and is a good example of south-south technology transfer.

The project, funded by the Development Marketplace, is a pilot that will test out a strategy to identify local champions and potential clients for the Nubian Vault houses.

We traveled an hour outside of Jaipur to Laporiya village, in the Jaipur District. One of the 41353 villages across 32 Districts of Rajasthan that depends largely on agriculture and dairy for sustenance.

The total cultivated area of the state encompasses about 20 million hectares and out of this only 20% of the land is irrigated. Ground water level is available only at a depth of 30 to 61m. Yet with minimum inputs, the agricultural sector of the state accounts for 22.5 per cent of the State economy.

Climate change poses a serious threat to future food security. Increases in temperatures and changes in rainfall patterns are expected to increase food shortages, especially in Africa. In response, governments and scientists are looking for ways to reduce the negative impacts of climate change on food production.

Ethiopia, which has a strong history of conserving its food crops, has partnered with the CGIAR-supported Bioversity International to implement a World Bank Development Marketplace 2009 winning project called Innovative Pilot Scheme Would Match Seeds to the Needs of Women Farmers. The project works to ensure farmers, particularly women farmers, will have an assured supply of climate-tolerant seeds for food production as climatic conditions change in the future.

Hello Development Marketplace Community! I am writing to introduce myself. I am the manager for a Development Marketplace funded project called “Adding Value to Waste in the Cassava Processing-Goat Keeping Systems.” The project won funding in the 2008 Global competition. It is being implemented in Abeokuta Nigeria.

This entry is the kick-off for featured blog I will be submitting regularly every two weeks. I’ll be bringing to you updates on how the project is going: challenges, successes, bottlenecks and maybe even some unexpected turns and twists.

But first I wanted to tell you a little more about myself. I am Kokawole Adebayo. My nickname is Kola and I was born in a Yoruba (southwest Nigeria) family, third of  twenty-one children in a polygamous family with nine mothers. I am a Muslim man married to a Christian woman (Anthonia Folasade) for ten years now and we have two daughters (‘Tiola and Kosoba).

My primary education was at Ibadan and Ode-Remo. I went to University at Abeokuta (Nigeria) on a Commonwealth Scholarship at the University of Reading (United Kingdom) to complete a PhD in Agricultural Extension and Rural Development.

I am currently a Senior Lecturer at the University of Agriculture, Abeokuta. I have worked for 23 years as an extension officer, rural development expert and lecturer. My professional interests include uptake and dissemination of agricultural innovations in smallholder farming systems, management and sustainable funding of agricultural development as well as rural livelihoods and management of the environment.

Check out more about me on my LinkedIn profile where I connect with others in the Development Marketplace Community in the Development Marketplace LinkedIn group! More the week after next about the goals of the project. Stay tuned!!