The director-general of the OPEC Fund for International Development (the OPEC Fund) Dr Abdulhamid Alkhalifa has signed a US$20mn development loan to help finance Burkina Faso’s Agricultural Value Chain Support Project (PAPFA)

Eni and Societè National de Distribution des Petroles AGIL SpA (SNDP) have signed an MoU to cultivate castor at a semi-industrial level to produce sustainable biofuels, which is being trialled by Eni in the Gafsa area

Fly-farmer and insect technology pioneer AgriProtein and the South African National Bioinformatics Institute at the University of the Western Cape have sequenced the genome of the black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens) across both sexes and strains originating from Kenya and South Africa

The Board of Trustees of the Al Sumait Prize for African Development has decided to jointly award the Million Dollar 2019 Prize in the field of food security to The Africa Rice Centre and Pan Africa Bean Research Alliance (PABRA)

Dr Ivan Meyer, Western Cape minister of agriculture, has launched the Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (DAFF) Western Cape’s Producer/Farmer Register (PFR) at the Western Cape Department’s Research Farm, Langgewens, outside Malmesbury