Kenyan farmers reap fruits of agricultural cooperation with China

This African proverb means once the knowledge is shared with others, it will be useful for future generations.

Anna Wanjiku once gave up on her tomato greenhouse installed on her 5-acre (2-hectare) farm in Matangi Tisa village in Kenya’s Nakuru County, because of bacterial wilt, a disease caused by soilborne bacteria.

But things changed last October when she was approached by lecturers from Egerton University who offered to help her manage the plant disease with technology developed at the Nanjing Agricultural University in China.

Having improved her bean yield after working with the joint lab of the two universities, Wanjiku did not hesitate to offer up her farm to be used as a demonstration center to teach other farmers how to use technology to manage bacterial wilt disease.

With the lab’s help, her dilapidated green house was refurbished and later used as a field classroom to educate students, farmers and county agricultural officers on how to graft tomato shoots onto disease-resistant rootstocks. This has enabled farmers to improve their yields, reduce crop damage and decrease the need for imported pesticides.

Now, the village is one of 10 poverty alleviation and agricultural demonstration projects across Africa.