U.S. Universities Step Up to Fight Hunger

Brenda Dawson, Horticulture Innovation Lab

Meet the talented students and researchers who are working with universities in California, Georgia, Colorado, Virginia and Massachusetts to sustainably build a more food-secure future. Read more.

Young African Leaders Drive Opportunity and 

Food Security

 In support of Feed the Future's goal to drive agriculture-led development and food security, the U.S. African Development Foundation awarded 36 Mandela Washington Fellows $25,000 entrepreneurship grants to expand or launch new ventures, many of which are creating jobs, providing training for youth and expanding affordable food supplies in the Fellows' home countries. Hamaro plans to use the grant he received to help grow his region's small-scale piggery industry. Read more.

Cochran Fellows Utilize Technology to Expand Knowledge of Herd Management and Breeding Techniques 

 The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Service Cochran Fellowship Program developed a project to improve herd management and breeding techniques through an intensive training period with six Fellows from Feed the Future focus countries Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Read more.

Peace Corps Volunteers Inspire Ethiopian 

Youth to Think Creatively to Tackle 

Environmental Challenges

 Peace Corps Volunteers are engaging Ethiopian youth to develop creative and innovative solutions to Ethiopia's most pressing environmental issues by organizing the region's first Growing and Renewing our World camp. Read more.

In Diplomacy Lab, University Students Team with State Department to Tackle Global Food Insecurity

As part of the Department of State's Diplomacy Lab project, which aims to foster creativity and outside-the-box problem solving, university students have the opportunity to explore and tackle real-world challenges, working under the guidance of faculty members who are authorities in their fields to develop substantive policy recommendations.

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Growing a New Crop of "Agropreneurs" in Kenya

David Rotich was an emerging businessman struggling to earn income working in Kenya's service industry. He made just enough to get by and support his young family, but his restaurant business required grueling hours. Today, Rotich earns a better monthly income growing seedlings than he did in his restaurant business. Read more.

 Meet Bettie Kawonga, an expert in dairy science and technology who is working to establish a network of Community Business Incubation Centers in Malawi, which will enable under-employed Malawian youth to become successful entrepreneurs in Malawi's dairy sector. Read more.

 How do you teach innovation? A partnership under Feed the Future is empowering university students to solve real-world agricultural problems while learning the nuts and bolts of how to innovate. Read more.

 Drip irrigation is rare in Tanzania, but Fue envisions a future where the technology will help smallholder farmers across the country grow profitable crops even without the benefit of regular rainfall. Read more.

 Through its Feed the Future activities in Uganda, the U.S. Agency for International Development organized a national youth agriculture event in September 2014 called "Youth and Agriculture: Exploiting Opportunities - Go for Gold." The three-day event exposed youth to a variety of food and agriculture-related opportunities and promoted peer-to-peer engagement. Read more.

 More than 16,000 volunteer assignments - completed by U.S. farmers and other technical experts from all 50 states - have benefited approximately one million farming families in over 110 countries, representing over $31 million worth of volunteer time contributions to development in the last five-year program alone. Read more.

  Last week, Feed the Future caught up with the 2014 class of The Aspen Institute's New Voices Fellowship, designed to bring more expert voices from the developing world into the global development discussion. Find out what this year's class of Fellows had to say about youth in food security and much more! Read more.

 In May 2014, a team of students from Washington State University and Michigan State University traveled to Kigali, Rwanda to work with students from the University of Rwanda on a research project addressing pressing questions in Rwanda's coffee sector. Read more.

 Afioluwa Mogaji is so passionate about the agriculture sector that he changed his name to Africanfarmer. He saw firsthand how, without the incentives, infrastructure and support systems to help communities be more resilient to crises, youth in the suburbs and rural agrarian communities often view agriculture as a risky undertaking. Read more.

 Sixteen agricultural science students from Mali are set to embark on a program sponsored by the U.S. Government under the Feed the Future initiative and designed to strengthen the agricultural research capacity of Malian institutions. The students will first study intensive English for six months before pursuing Masters and PhD-level degrees in various agricultural fields at African higher education institutions in Kenya, Ghana and South Africa. Read more.

Armenia's International Center for Agribusiness Research and Education is working to increase entry-level employment opportunities through its Agribusiness Teaching Center. Read more.