KENYA – A new system of tracking stolen livestock in regions prone to rustling will be launched this year.

Administration Police commandant Kinuthia Mbugua said the Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking device will help not only fight cattle rustling but also recover stolen animals, reports The Daily Nation.

“The new device will be fixed on one animal in a flock. With it, we can be able to monitor the movements of the flock,” he said.

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Mozambique’s mango growers are now in a better position to preserve and market their produce thanks to training they are being provided with by a Mississippi State University Specialist.

Barakat Mahmoud, an assistant research professor of food safety and microbiology with the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experiment Station, recently spent three weeks in the African country training 13 agriculture agents as part of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Farmer-to-Farmer program, implemented by CNFA. CNFA is a Washington, D.C.-based not-for-profit organization dedicated to improving economic growth in developing countries by training the private sector.

Mahmoud taught the agents how to dry foods, analyse the quality and food safety, natural preservation methods and how to process mangoes.

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Uganda is going to start the export of fresh peeled plantain bananas – matooke – to the US, under the banana value chain project.

The Danish Development Agency (Danida) $2m (Shs4.9b) funded project will be implemented under the Uganda Industrial Research Institute (UIRI).

“Under the new arrangements, quality matooke will be peeled and packed for export to the States and other European countries. The project is awaiting arrival of machines that will enhance quality of exports,” said Godfrey Atuheire the winner of the Danida grant.

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HIGH prices obtaining at tobacco auction floors have immensely benefited small-scale growers, many of whom are fairly new entrants into the sector Tobacco has progressively demonstrated its ability to empower small-scale growers, with many graduating from mere subsistence farming to semi-commercial thus contributing significantly to the country’s Gross Domestic Product.

Output is expected to reach 150 million kilogrammes, up from 131 million last year. The target is to reach the 210 million kg achieved in 2000.

Agrarian reform has seen more black farmers venture into tobacco production, previously a preserve of a few white commercial farmers.

The thousands that have ventured into the lucrative tobacco farming have not looked back and the visible transformation of their standards of living and the economic dynamics in their respective areas speak volumes of the potential that has always been resident in this constituency.

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A US$ 10 million new cassava processing plant set up by Rwanda Development Bank (BRD) in Kinazi sector, Ruhango district will have it first product on market late next month.

Jack Kayonga, the BRD chief executive officer, who inspected Kinazi Cassava Processing Plant, last week said that the factory will have an installed capacity of 20 tons of flour per day. In order to achieve full capacity, the factory will need a daily supply of 60 tons of raw the material, cassava.

The facility uses 15 cubic meters of water per hour and operates 10 hours a day.

Though run by BRD, the bank plans to allow farmers acquire shares and ultimately enable cassava growers to own and manage it themselves. For the local authorities, the plant comes as an opportunity that will benefit the local population by enabling them add value to their produce.

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