From Left to Right: Kikki Nordin, Regional Team Leader, Environment and Economic Development (REED),Sida; Claes Kjellström, representative of the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA) at the Embassy of Sweden in Nairobi; Björn Häggmark, Minister, Deputy Head of Mission, Embassy of Sweden. (photo credit: ILRI/Nairobi).
The Swedish government has launched a $12 million programme that provides grants to bioscientists working to improve food production and environmental management in Eastern Africa in what could help the region boost its food security.
The Bioresources Innovation Network for Eastern Africa Development (Bio-Innovate) Programme — the first of its kind in Africa — provides competitive grants to African researchers who are working with the private sector and non-governmental organisations to find ways to improve food security, boost resilience to climate change and identify environmentally sustainable ways of producing food.
The Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) backed programme that will be managed by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) in Nairobi will in the first three years support five research-based projects working to improve the productivity of sorghum, millet, cassava, sweet potato and bean farmers; to help smallholder farmers adapt to climate change; to improve the processing of wastes in the production of sisal and coffee; and to better treat waste water generated in leather processing and slaughterhouse operations.
Participants at the Bio-Innovate launch at the ILRI campus in Nairobi on 16 March 2011 (photo credit: ILRI).
A new programme that provides grants to bio-scientists working to improve food production and environmental management in Eastern Africa was launched on March 16, 2011 at the Nairobi headquarters of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI).
According to a press release from Nairobi, the newly established Bio-resources Innovation Network for Eastern Africa Development (Bio-Innovate) Programme provides competitive grants to African researchers.
The grants are meant for researchers who are working with the private sector and non-governmental organisations to find ways of improving food security, boost resilience to climate change and identify environmentally sustainable ways of producing food.
In its first three-year-phase, the programme is supporting five research-based projects working to improve the productivity of sorghum, millet, cassava, sweet potato, and bean farmers. It also helps farmers to adapt to climate change; to improve the processing of wastes in the production of sisal and coffee and to better treat waste water generated in leather processing and slaughter house operations.
In a second call for proposals, beginning June 2011, Bio-Innovate will help build agricultural commodity “value chains” in the region and a supportive policy environment for bio-resource innovations.
The five-year-programme is funded by a $12m grant from the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA). Bio-Innovate is managed by ILRI and co-located within the Biosciences Eastern and Central Africa (BECA) Hub at ILRI’s Nairobi campus. Bio-Innovate will be implemented in Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda.
“By emphasising innovations to help drive crop production in the six partner countries, Bio-Innovate is working at the heart of one of the region’s greatest challenges—that of providing enough food in the face of climate change, diversifying crops and addressing productivity constraints that are threatening the livelihoods of millions,” said Carlos Seré, ILRI’s director general. An increasingly large number of poor people in the developing world are food insecure. In sub-Saharan Africa, where agricultural production relies on rain fed smallholder farming, hunger, environmental degradation and climate change present a triple threat to individual, community and national development. In Eastern Africa alone, over 100 million people depend on agriculture to meet their fundamental economic and nutritional needs. Although some three-quarters of the African population are involved in farming or herding, investment in African agricultural production has continued to lag behind population growth rates for several decades, with the result that the continent has been unable to achieve sustainable economic and social development.
The International Livestock Research Institute website features an interview with Calestous Juma, director of the Science, Technology and Globalization Project at the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, during the Bio-Innovate official launch in Nairobi on 16 march, 2011.
In the interview, Juma, an eminent Kenyan bioscientist, says that biosciences offer many regions in Africa an opportunity to produce surplus food for the first time.
Poster announcing the launch of the Bio-Innovate Program. Photo credit: ILRI
A hub to connect and fund East African agricultural researchers, and assist them in reaching out to the private sector, may yield products to aid the region’s development.
The Bioresources Innovation Network for Eastern Africa Development (Bio-Innovate) was officially launched in Nairobi last month (16 March) with a US$16.5 million, five-year grant from the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida). It will be managed by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and hosted at its Biosciences Eastern and Central Africa centre.
Seyoum Leta, programme manager of Bio-Innovate, said the initiative is expected to fill a long-standing “missing link” between research and market products, and inspire East African bioscientists to generate research that will accelerate the region’s development towards a future that is food-secure and resilient to climate change.
Bio-resource Innovations Network for Eastern Africa Development (BioInnovate Africa) was a multidisciplinary competitive funding mechanism for biosciences and product orientated innovation activities in Eastern Africa.
It was hosted by ILRI from 2010 to 2015. This website is an archive of project activities.
In addition to organizations recognized for specific projects and outputs, we thank all donors which globally supported the work of ILRI and its partners through their contributions to the CGIAR system
BioInnovate Africa 