Dr Carol Ibe is spearheading an event at the Cambridge Festival which will launch an innovative food security project for Africa.
By empowering Africa’s brightest agricultural scientists and fostering stronger collaborations with farmers, we are scaling up solutions we’ve built over the past decade to create lasting impact.
Dr Carol Ibe
A foundation started by a Gates Cambridge Scholar is leading a Cambridge Festival event in March to celebrate agricultural innovation in Africa where a new project on food security will be launched.
The Agri-Innovation & Impact Project (AGRIIP) will be launched at the Roots of Resilience event on 27th March. It is designed to empower African bio-innovators and smallholder farmers to tackle pressing food security challenges.
The Festival event is a collaboration between JR Biotek Foundation, founded by Gates Cambridge Scholar Dr Carol Ibe, the University of Cambridge’s Department of Plant Sciences and the Global Food Security Interdisciplinary Research Centre. It will celebrate a decade of transformative impact on Africa’s agricultural sector.
Bringing together experts from academia, policy and industry, the event is shaped by the contributions of Gates Cambridge Scholars, including Dr Albert Arhin (a core member of JR Biotek’s team) and Dr Rebekah (Scheuerle) Sacher (a Board Member of JR Biotek Foundation), alongside JR Biotek alumni based in Africa and several Mastercard Cambridge Scholars. Their expertise spans crop sciences, climate resilience, sustainable development, bio-innovation and entrepreneurship.
Preserving Africa’s indigenous and traditional crops
Smallholder farmers – who produce a significant proportion of Africa’s food supply – are grappling with declining yields due to erratic weather patterns, soil degradation and limited access to sustainable farming practices. With climate change and evolving agricultural practices threatening Africa’s indigenous and traditional crops, AGRIIP aims to protect, restore and enhance these historically undervalued food sources.
Dr Carol Ibe [2015] and her collaborators, including partners from Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya and Cambridge, are set to work closely with scientists and farming communities in three African countries to ensure AGRIIP is aligned with the real needs of farmers.
“With each passing day, my family members, who are smallholder farmers in Nigeria, share how unpredictable weather patterns are disrupting farm production systems,” says Dr Ibe. “From devastating droughts and floods to pest outbreaks and soil degradation, the climate crisis is intensifying food insecurity across Africa. AGRIIP is about more than just food. It’s about livelihoods, culture and biodiversity. By empowering Africa’s brightest agricultural scientists and fostering stronger collaborations with farmers, we are scaling up solutions we’ve built over the past decade to create lasting impact.”
AGRIIP: A five-year plan for transformational change
AGRIIP is a five-year initiative bringing together 100 African scientists, over 3,000 smallholder farmers, and key industry stakeholders to co-create innovative, climate-resilient solutions for sustainable agriculture. Through a multi-disciplinary, inclusive approach, the project will:
· Create innovation hubs where scientists and farmers work together to develop and test practical, locally adaptable agricultural solutions.
· Train and mentor early-career scientists to conduct impactful research that addresses food security and climate adaptation challenges.
· Enhance the skills of scientists and entrepreneurs by offering a dynamic co-learning platform to develop and scale agricultural innovations into viable businesses, generating employment opportunities, especially for women and young people in rural areas.
· Bridge science, culture and the arts to highlight the significance of indigenous crops, reimagining their role in food systems, traditions, and economic development.
Global and African collaboration for a resilient future
AGRIIP builds upon JR Biotek Foundation’s prior successes, including the Africa Bio-Innovation Challenge, which provided seed funding to agribusiness start-ups in Benin (2018) and Ghana (2021), both led by the Foundation’s alumni scientists. With a reach extending across multiple African countries, AGRIIP bridges the gap between cutting-edge research and practical agricultural solutions, ensuring scientific advancements translate into tangible benefits for farmers and communities.
“This isn’t just about research. It’s about real impact, real people, and real change for Africa’s food future,” says Dr Ibe. “Now is the time to scale what we’ve built.”
Dr Kabir Umar, Deputy-Director of Research at the Centre for Dryland Agriculture (CDA) at Bayero University, Nigeria – a World Bank Centre of Excellence – is among the many African scientists collaborating on AGRIIP. Having benefited from JR Biotek Foundation’s inaugural plant molecular biology training programme at Cambridge in 2017, Dr Umar and his centre later partnered with the Foundation to co-host a world-class training workshop in Kano, Nigeria, in 2021.
Through AGRIIP, CDA and JR Biotek Foundation will spearhead efforts to tackle dryland agricultural challenges in Northern Nigeria and the Sahel region, where persistent droughts and climate change continue to devastate farming livelihoods. CDA brings extensive expertise and deep-rooted community engagement in this area, making this partnership a critical driver of sustainable solutions.
“AGRIIP is an African-led initiative that prioritises demand-driven innovations that are locally adaptable,” says Dr Ruth Prempeh, Head of the Biotechnology, Seed & Postharvest Division at the CSIR-Crops Research Institute (CRI) in Ghana. Like Dr Umar, Dr Prempeh participated in JR Biotek’s training programme at Cambridge in 2017 and has since played a pivotal role in strengthening the partnership between CRI and the Foundation. Their collaboration has led to numerous innovative initiatives, including a molecular biology training workshop in Ghana (2021), the JR Biotek Alumni Symposium (2022) and the Africa Mycorrhizal Mapping & Metagenomics Workshop (2024), a collaborative project co-developed with the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks. These programmes have engaged scientists from across Africa alongside international collaborators.
A key Cambridge partner in this initiative is Professor John Carr, Head of the Virology and Plant Pathology Group at the Department of Plant Sciences. Over the past decade, Professor Carr has been instrumental in supporting JR Biotek Foundation’s fundraising efforts and has provided invaluable training to African scientists, fostering long-term partnerships that continue to drive impactful agricultural innovation.
Roots of Resilience: A celebration of a decade of impact
The Roots of Resilience event is more than a celebration of 10 years of achievements. It is a rallying call to scale solutions and amplify Africa-led agricultural innovation. The event will feature:
· Keynote speeches from global leaders in food security, agricultural research and policy.
· Panel discussions on bio-innovation, climate resilience and the conservation of crops, livestock and ecosystems.
· An art exhibition highlighting the intersection of African heritage, agriculture and science, supporting fundraising efforts for AGRIIP.
· The official launch of AGRIIP, marking the beginning of an ambitious new chapter in Africa’s agricultural transformation.
“We are proud to host this milestone event at Cambridge, where my journey as a Gates Cambridge Scholar began. The foundation laid here has been pivotal in scaling solutions that will shape the future of African agriculture,” says Carol Ibe.
*Roots of Resilience is on March 27th, 9:30am – 5:30pm, at the Sainsbury Laboratory in Bateman Street, Cambridge. University of Cambridge. Register here.
To drive the success of AGRIIP, JR Biotek Foundation has launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise funds for training scientists, establishing innovation hubs and scaling farmer-led solutions across Africa. To donate and be part of the movement, click here.
**Picture credit: JR Biotek
