Our Story

Africa Harvest Biotech Foundation International (popularly known as Africa Harvest) was founded in the year 2002 by the current Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Dr. Florence Muringi Wambugu with a vision of an Africa free from hunger, poverty and malnutrition. She was inspired by God to leave her job as the Regional Director of ISAAA, where she had worked for seven years to start Africa Harvest. There were also founding Board of Directors (BOD) who included late Dr. Cyrus Ndiritu, former Director General of Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (now KALRO), and others, currently represented in the BOD by Mr. Joseph Gilbert Kibe. A significant contribution was made in the establishment of the organization by Dr. Kanayo Nwanze, then Director General of WARDA (now The Africa Rice Centre), who served as the Chair of the BOD for five years. The mission of founding the organization was to use agricultural science and technological innovations to help the poor rural farming communities in Africa to achieve food security, economic well-being, and sustainable rural development. This Pan-African vision was premised on using tools agricultural science and technological innovations and strategic partnerships with grassroots communities, governments, research institutions, public/private sector and development partners at different levels to create sustainable life-changing impact and developing working models based on crop value chains, which could be shared widely to further scale up the impact.