Rationale of the kringloop labs

Creating new research and education opportunities in Africa

Despite the significant growth in agricultural research capacity over the last five decades, agricultural research expenditures in Africa have remained weak and stagnant, even lower than in the 70s and 80s, with only 0.5% of the agricultural gross domestic product (GDP) being invested in 2011. By contrast, Belgium spends an average of 2.7% of its gross GDP on research and development (R&D). In comparison, South Africa invests 0.8% of its GDP, making it the continent's leading investor in R&D. Unfortunately, African countries have not fully exploited the potential of scientific knowledge to boost agricultural productivity.

IPBO, based on its experience with African partner institutions in research and capacity building, has observed that the lack of sufficient investment in scientific equipment hinders the establishment of sustainable Africa-led Agro-biotech research. Although capacity building is a priority on Africa's development agenda, and significant resources are being allocated to train scientists, measuring the long-term impact of these activities is challenging.

After conducting past capacity-building activities and stakeholder consultations, African collaborators from (inter)national research centres and universities in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have requested more "hands-on training" on molecular and bioinformatics disciplines to catch up with the latest biotechnologies, such as genome editing and GWAS analysis. However, the long-term impact of this training is minimal when beneficiaries lack the necessary infrastructure in their home institutions to apply the newly acquired competencies. Furthermore, the local private sector providing third-party services for research, such as diagnostics, sequencing, and primers, is almost non-existent in many SSA countries, leading to an additional bottleneck to conducting independent research sustainably.

Therefore, a more profound transformation is needed to foster a more autonomous and sustainable agricultural education and research in Africa, where research laboratories are well-equipped and less dependent on international projects and externalized services.