We love your work Jane Wanza 🙌 Keep going
Leveraging Science for Safe Food: Meet Jane Wanza Kamau 🌽🌍 Faces of Innovation | Growing Innovation Together Aflatoxin contamination is a quiet but serious food safety challenge affecting staple crops such as maize, sorghum, and groundnuts across Africa. For Jane Wanza, the challenge is not only about developing solutions, it is about ensuring those solutions reach the people who need them most. As a Scaling and Agribusiness Specialist at IITA, Jane works to build and strengthen public and private sector partnerships that support the availability, affordability, and adoption of Aflasafe-an IITA research-based technology that helps farmers produce safer food and feed. Her work brings together researchers, government institutions, private sector actors, processors, producers, and other stakeholders to move science from research stations into real world application. For Jane, tackling aflatoxin requires collective action. “No one can solve the aflatoxin challenge alone,” she says. Beyond partnerships, Jane is passionate about nurturing the next generation of professionals. She credits mentorship from colleagues, including Konlambigue Matieyedou during the early years of establishing Aflasafe commercialization at IITA, as well as the opportunities provided by Dr. Alejandro Ortega, Head of the Aflasafe Unit, for shaping her own professional journey. When asked how she would explain her work to someone without a science background, Jane puts it simply: “Food is medicine for the body only if it is safe. If it is not safe, it is not food.” Through people like Jane, innovation moves beyond laboratories, helping create pathways for safer food systems across Africa.Jane Wanza #FacesOfInnovation #FoodSafety #Aflatoxin #AgriculturalInnovation #Partnerships #CGIAR #IITA