Africa Harvest CEO named top 100 biotech global influencers

NAIROBI, KENYA: Dr Florence Wambugu, the founder and CEO of Africa Harvest has been named one of the world’s 100 most influential people in biotechnology by Scientific American Worldview.

Also named is Calestous Juma, a Kenyan Professor at the Harvard University’s Practice of International Development Director, Science, Technology, Globalization Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Bill Gates and his wife Melinda are also in the list, together with leading luminaries from different disciplines.

“Am humbled by the recognition,” Dr. Wambugu says.

“Being in the same list as one of my mentors, Prof. Juma, as well as Bill Gates, who supported our Africa Biofortified Sorghum Project is very humbling.”

“My passion for biotechnology is rooted my desire to increase food productivity for farmers in Africa,” she said.

“Agricultural innovations are essential for transforming and revolutionizing agriculture in Kenya and Africa as a whole. Biotechnology, and more specifically the genetic engineering technology, is of the many tools available to help achieve this transformation.”

The Scientific American Worldview: A Global Biotechnology Perspective debuted it’s 7th edition during the BIO International Convention in June.

It honours 100 most influential people in the field of biotechnology, as determined through nominations and selections from an international panel of experts.

In its introduction, the publication calls the 100 people “visionaries who continue to reshape biotechnology and the world”.

It points out that biotechnology is just 40 years old and a relatively new industry.

Its starting point, arguably, was the 1975 Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA.

The publication says the 100 biotech leaders have exhibited creativity and enterprise.

They have been resilience and made numerous sacrifices, as the complexity of the science and its regulation demands they constantly strive to maintain momentum.

“And since risk-taking is practically the norm in biotech, these figures have to possess the confidence to outdare the crowd, to blaze a trail and to maintain their nerve, sometimes against overwhelming odds”.