Author: Abel Renew

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Plastic Waste – build our future

Scidev.net reports how just a few years ago, Nzambi Matee decided to do something about the plastic pollution that she saw all over Kenya. Now, she has designed and built a thriving recycling and brick production facility, and her social enterprise Gjenge Makers has recycled plastic waste weighing more than five female elephants.
This week on Africa Science Focus, reporter Michael Kaloki takes a tour of Matee’s workshop – and finds out how she is tackling Kenya’s pollution problem, one brick at a time.

Listen now on Scidev.net

Africa Science Focus, with Halima Athumani.

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Paint Your Cattle 👁️

Cattle Eyespots

Recent fascinating research from Botswana has looked at the effects of painting eyes on cattle.

The researchers have shown that eyespots painted on cattle rumps were associated with reduced attacks by ambush carnivores (lions and leopards). Cattle painted with eyespots were significantly more likely to survive than were cross-marked and unmarked cattle, despite all treatment groups being similarly exposed to predation risk. While higher survival of eyespot-painted cattle supports the detection hypothesis, increased survival of cross-marked cattle suggests an effect of novel and conspicuous marks more generally.
“To our knowledge, this is the first time eyespots have been shown to deter large mammalian predators. Applying artificial marks to high-value livestock may therefore represent a cost-effective tool to reduce livestock predation.”

Radford, C., McNutt, J.W., Rogers, T. et al. Artificial eyespots on cattle reduce predation by large carnivores. Commun Biol 3, 430 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-020-01156-0

https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-020-01156-0

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COVID-19: How to make masks, face shields, handwash stations, hand sanitiser and soap

Hesperian has an excellent set of instructions showing how to make facemasks and shields. It also shows how to make handwash stations, hand sanitiser and soap.

You can download the .pdf from here

The Tippy Tap is from www.hero-in-my-hood.co.za

Tippy Tap

Start making!

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AgriProFocus Kenya – Have You Joined?

Over at AgriProFocus, they bring together farmers, agribusinesses, civil society, knowledge institutes and governments. United in diversity, their members show that agribusiness and development are not mutually exclusive. Together, they find new, sustainable ways of creating impact with business; cultivating collaboration through linking, learning and leadership.

LINKING – Build successful partnerships

AgriProFocus helps people find the right people to solve problems and to do business with. Whether you are looking for change makers in the agri-food sector or partners to solve specific challenges with. Their network connects (un)usual suspects, facilitates innovative ways of working together and stimulates long term collaboration.

LEARNING – Expand your expertise

AgriProFocus facilitates exciting learning environments aimed at innovating people’s business. Their members share best practices, experiences and failures in order to learn from and with each other. Reflection and sense-making around specific issues are key in their learning processes.

LEADERSHIP – Find your leverage

AgriProFocus is a space for people to set and influence the agenda in collaboration with other relevant stakeholders. Their network aims to change both the ways of working and the rules of the game in the agri-food sector. By collectively improving the business environment for agripreneurs, they make sure impact is made at scale.

If that sounds interesting, you can join up here.
Ndiyo, I’ve joined 😊

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PlantVillage Nuru – an application that uses a digital assistant to diagnose crop disease

PlantVillage Nuru to diagnose crop disease
PlantVillage Nuru

PlantVillage Nuru is a publically supported, and publically developed application that uses a digital assistant to help farmers diagnose crop disease in the field, without an internet connection. Developed at Penn State University the app uses Google’s Tensorflow machine learning tool and a database of images collected by crop disease experts across the world. The app is based on extensive research comparing the accuracy of machine learning models to human experts and extension work. This is continual research and the app will be constantly updated. The app also allows for a blended model where images are examined by AI and human intelligence through a cloud system. This app was developed with International Institute of Tropical Agriculture and the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization. We welcome further collaboration with public institutions. This app is a public good and is not commercial or backed by venture capitalists. We do not have advertisements or collect farmer data to sell to third parties. You can donate if you like https://plantvillage.psu.edu/. In addition to the diagnostic tool the app contains the library of knowledge that is on PlantVillage, the largest open access library of crop health knowledge in the world.