Calestous Juma, director of the Science, Technology and Globalization Project at the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, was film-interviewed at the official launch of a Bio-Innovate Program at the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), 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. ‘Without biosciences research within Africa, agriculture will face a difficult future. The Bio-Innovate Program is important because it will stimulate new industries that are linked to the life sciences. Farmers will not benefit from producing more food unless they can get it to markets to process and sell.

‘Rwanda after the genocide, the first thing they did was to modernize agriculture. And Rwanda has started to feed itself.’

Watch the short (2-minute) filmed interview of Calestous Juma by ILRI: Biosciences will be the key that allows Africa to feed itself, March 2011.