Leading Science in Africa

Posted on Apr 30, 2014 in April 2014 edition

The main food source for much of the world’s livestock, forage grasses are vitally important to meeting the increasing demand for meat and milk. Dr. Segenet Kelemu has been recognized by L’Oreal-UNESCO 2014 Women in Science award for her research on how microbes living in symbiosis with these grasses influence their health, their capacity to adapt to environmental stress and their ability to resist disease.

Loreal Women in Science

By enabling small-scale farmers in tropical and sub-tropical regions to choose the most productive, most pathogen-resistant forage grasses, her work has both helped them improve their lives and increase supplies of much needed animal proteins.

In particular, Dr. Kelemu’s research on Brachiaria grasses has shown that their capacity to thrive in diverse environments is related to an endophyte fungus which lives within these plants, protects them and exists in symbiosis with them.
ICIPE photo
Her work has led to solutions for disruptions in food supplies caused by pathogenic organisms andextreme climatic conditions and may help to determine which microbes allow crops to survive environmental alterations.

Dr. Kelemu grew up in a remote village in Ethiopia. Although she bore the unequal burden carried by rural African women, she had an uncommon determination to overcome any obstacle to achievement and to help her continent’s farmers. Defying strong cultural norms, she became the first woman from her region to attend what was then Ethiopia’s only university.

Segenet Kelemu
In 2007 Dr. Kelemu established the Bio-sciences eastern and central Africa (BecA) Hub laboratories, hosted and managed by the International Livestock Research Institute in Kenya, and is currently Director General of the International Center for Insect Physiology and Ecology. “Africa is in desperate need of world-class institutions…”

Dr. Kelemu advices: “Set your goals and pursue them relentlessly. Don’t let anyone tell you that you cannot do it. Science is not reserved for the privileged few or the super smart or the especially crazy! If I can do it, so can you!”