Q&A: Women must ‘do the hard stuff’ to stand out

[NAIROBI] Agnes Kalibata, a Rwandan who grew up in Uganda with refugee parents, had an ambition to become a medical doctor or anengineer。

But as her father turned from teaching to farming to fund his children’seducation, little did Kalibata know she would end up being anagriculturalscientist.

Now, as president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) since 2014, Kalibata is helping to transform Africa’s agricultural sector through programmes designed to reach millions of smallholders.

In 2012 she won the Yara Food Prize – now the Africa Food Prize – in 2012, and in 2019 the US-based National Academy of Sciences awarded her the prestigious Public Welfare Medal “for her work to drive Africa’s agricultural transformation through modern science and effectivepolicy, helping to lift more than a million Rwandans out of poverty”.

“Be prepared to work hard but also be prepared to do the hard stuff.”

Agnes Kalibata, AGRA president

Kalibata tellsSciDev.Net,吉尔ls and young women in Africa who aspire to be scientists should be prepared not only to work hard but to do the “hard stuff”.

Tell us about your childhood

I grew up in Uganda to refugee parents. Even though my dad had been a teacher in Rwanda, the only thing he could do as a refugee in Uganda was to farm. He was determined to see that hischildrengot better out of life than he did.

As I grew older, I developed a habit for reading, especially in my secondary school where I got to see a library for the first time. This helped me understand that there was a whole other world around me.

Building on my parents’ efforts, I got best student scholarship for secondary education from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNCHR) and later obtained a scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation to study for a master’s at Makerere University in Uganda and then a doctorate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the United States.

How did your journey as a scientist and policymaker begin?

当我在乌干达的马卡拉雷大学（Makarere University）获得第一学位时，我加入了乌干达Kawanda农业研究所的国际热带农业研究所（IITA），担任研究助理。beplay下载官网西西软件对于我的主人来说，我的工作专注于自然控制香蕉的主要害虫，香蕉是乌干达的主要主食。

“We have built the African Green Revolution Forum into a continental platform that brings policymakers, scientists, farmers and business leaders together.”

Agnes Kalibata, AGRA president

这项工作继续写入我的博士学位。我努力了解农作物，害虫和生物控制选择。我将香蕉植物追溯到其原产地。从乌干达到印度尼西亚，坦桑尼亚，泰国和越南。通过做researchon farmers’ plots in each of these countries, I was able to establish why the banana weevil was a pest in Uganda but not a pest in the area of its origin in South East Asia where it was under the control of natural enemies.

I cut my postdoctoral work [on banana bacteria wilt] short when I got an opportunity to go to Rwanda and lead a World Bank rural development project in the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources. That was the beginning of my shift from being a scientist to development work and later to policymaking.

How did you become Rwanda’s minister of agriculture and animal resources?

I held a few positions in Rwanda at the Ministry of Agriculture and Animal Resources before I became a minister from 2008 to 2014.

当我被任命领导农业部时，我得到了总统和government。这给了我一个机会将和美联社ply the scientific and technicalknowledgeI had acquired to work with the whole of government and marshal partnerships that enabled us to move from a country where people went to bed hungry to a food self-sufficient nation in a period of five years.

Because of that, Rwanda is significantly food secure and was able to significantly reduce poverty. Farmers’ yields increased and poverty reduced by 12 per cent in the same period.

What are your achievements as president of AGRA?

AGRA was designed to help African farmers use scientific knowledge and technologies to improve their lives: increase access to improved varieties, access to soil fertility management and understanding the policy environment where agriculture can thrive and enhance access to markets.

Coming from government, I saw the opportunity to help AGRA understand how governments work and how they could be leveraged.

I am proud of how AGRA has worked with its partners to reduce duplication of resources under what we call the Partnership for Inclusive Agricultural Transformation. This partnership aims to support country-owned plans and reduce fragmentation of donors on the ground, which is a long-standing problem that compromises the speed of delivery of development outcomes.

We have worked with the private sector and moved into new geographies where farmers never had access to yield improvingtechnologiessuch as improved varieties, and the information on how best to manage these inputs. We have been building platforms for scale with the private sector that allow a whole new group of farmers to be reached by partnering with local governments and local private sector.

We have built the African Green Revolution Forum into a continental platform that brings policymakers, scientists, farmers and business leaders together, and profiles the agriculture sector and its importance on the African continent.

What other achievements have you had as a female scientist in Africa?

I sit on many boards where I bring not only the African perspective on development issues that impact agriculture on the continent. Whenever I can, I mentor young people. Personally, I take it as a responsibility to support young people – especially women — to help them understand that they have a huge place and an important role to play in the world.

Currently, I am also working as a special envoy of the UN secretary-general for the 2021 Food Systems Summit. This role is a huge responsibility but it is an opportunity to drive things I care about: ending hunger and poverty, ending malnutrition, and dealing withclimate change。

您对旨在成为非洲科学家的女孩和年轻女性有什么建议？

I didn’t start out trying to be a scientist. But now, with all theinnovations和我们周围的技术，女孩有机会真正梦想成为一名科学家。我和我八岁的女儿看到了。她以我没有成长的方式接触技术。她梦想着从化妆到飞机一直设计！

Agriculture today is not about killing pests like I thought back then. It’s about solving big problems – especially around climate change – gene editing, big数据and many more.

Girls and young women, you are entering into a male-heavy territory. You need to develop some thick skin. Be prepared to work hard but also be prepared to do the hard stuff. Find something you care about enough because it’s going to be necessary to keep you going.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Sub-Saharan Africa English desk.