Skip to main content
Skip to main content

2AFRICA is a large-scale, science-based “research-in-development” project focused on putting nitrogen fixation to work for smallholder farmers growing legume crops in Africa. The project’s vision of success is to build sustainable, long-term partnerships to enable African smallholder farmers to benefit from symbiotic N2 fixation by grain legumes through effective production technologies, including inoculants and fertilizers.

In partnership with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), URBANET has, in the first phase of the project, disseminated improved grain legume varieties, rhizobium inoculants, and phosphate-based fertilizers to 5000 farmers in Karaga and the Savelugu/Nanton districts of the Northern Region.

Farmers are introduced to new technologies through several approaches, such as demonstration farms, adaptation farms, farmer field days, radio programmes and video shows.

URBANET also ensures access to inputs and last-mile delivery of the project by linking farmers to seed companies in Tamale (Heritage Seeds Company Limited) and facilitating community seed production. Facilitation of linkages between farmers and input distributors allows for improved access to legume inputs by providing farmers with contacts with input dealers.

Another key objective of the project is ensuring farmers have access to market output. URBANET conducts producer group training on grain quality and market standards to familiarize farmers with the quality the market desires. URBANET also facilitates the marketing of farmer produce through farmers’ collective marketing by linking farmers to specific buyers and processors.

As part of the project, URBANET dedicates considerable energy and resources to ensuring that farm work burdens are reduced for women.  This is achieved by identifying and evaluating simple labour-saving tools with women farmers, as well as encouraging tractor service providers to buy and provide services to women.

In this phase, URBANET is focused on the dissemination of legume technologies to farmers in the Savelugu, Karaga and Kumbungu districts of the Northern Region of Ghana.

The 2SCALE project is the largest agribusiness incubator in Africa, working with farmers and small-scale entrepreneurs in 12 countries. The project builds networks that connect farmers, buyers, and intermediaries, enabling them to create and grow new businesses. The project mobilizes and trains groups of farmers and creates the necessary linkages to ensure that all elements—technology, organizational capacity, market access, credit, and extension advice—are in place. The desired result is an agribusiness cluster and commercial value chains that can compete effectively in the market, benefiting producers, consumers, and everyone else. Private sector firms are supported by the project to find business opportunities for sourcing products from or selling agro-inputs to smallholder farmers in Africa.

URBANET has been working with the International Fertilizer Development Center on the project in the Savelugu/Nanton municipality since 2013. As a business support services provider, URBANET provides business support services to two clusters: the Libga Chilli Pepper Cluster and the Savelugu Soybean Cluster.

URBANET, in collaboration with ActionAid Ghana, initiated a project to promote urban and peri-urban vulnerable farmers’ access to land for farming. The project was preceded by research, community-level sensitization, dialogue meetings with stakeholders (chiefs and land owners, planning authorities), and culminated in a project dubbed “Zoning of Agricultural Lands/Green Belts.”. The project has since facilitated the zoning of about 475 acres of land in urban and peri-urban Tamale to be reserved purposely for agriculture especially to support women engaged in vegetable farming as their main source of livelihoods.

This is a two-year project that identified 31 community-level volunteers from 31 communities in the northern region engaged in livestock farming and trained them as Animal Health Workers to support their communities in basic animal husbandry such as de-worming of animals, washing of wounds, castration of animals, and serving as a link between the Veterinary Services Department of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) in reporting cases of animal diseases and mobilizing farmers for national vaccination exercises. The project is funded by ActionAid Ghana, with the Ministry of Food and Agriculture serving as the main collaborator in its implementation.

We are sensitive and committed to reduce all forms of discrimination in our service, processes and interventions. We treat our donors, partners, and agencies fairly and in accordance with the law.

We appreciate the fact that our success is dependent on a diverse and coordinated team that is committed to the highest standards of trust, hard work, cooperation and communication. Our officers are committed to working together and coordinating effectively with donors, partners, and internal and external constituents. We encourage synergies through efficient networking.

We are committed to the highest standards of excellence in pursuit of our mission. We reward excellence in performance and service delivery.

We are committed to identifying innovative and functional approaches to our work and using best practices to explore new ways to fulfill our mission in the most effective and efficient way.

We are honest, transparent and straightforward in all that we do. We treat everybody with dignity and respect. We act responsibly with resources entrusted to us. We are accountable and every member of staff has a responsibility to demonstrate the highest ethical standards.