Dr Nakalembe wins Africa food prize

As the country struggles with floods, invasive pests and diseases that affect crop production, scientists are devising means to shield people from food insecurity.
Dr Catherine Nakalembe, a Ugandan scientist, and Dr André Bationo from Burkina Faso have been announced as 2020 winners of the Africa Food Prize (AFP).
The award ceremony was held last Friday in Kigali,  Rwanda. The AFP recognises extraordinary women, men, and institutions, whose outstanding contributions to African agriculture are forging a new era of sustainable food security and economic opportunity that elevates all Africans.
Dr Nakalembe was honoured for her dedication to improve lives of smallholder farmers by using satellite technology to collect data to guide agricultural decision-making.
According to the AFP organisers, Dr Nakalembe’s work has helped prevent potentially disastrous impacts of crop failure and promoted the formulation of policies and programmes that are directly shielding farmers against the impacts of crop failure.
In her acceptance speech from a  September 11 AFP press release, Dr Nakalembe said she is keen on working pro-actively with various stakeholders to promote confidence among government officials to enable them dedicate resources towards food security rather than retroactively addressing the negative impacts of major food events.
“I believe that together, we can harness the great potential of our farms to achieve sustainable food systems across the continent,” she said in a YouTube video.
“It is a recognition of a lot of work that I have done over a long time. It shows that there is huge emphasis and recognition of the importance of data. It is really exciting,” she added.
“Initially when satellite systems were being built, they were meant to look upward into space to see what is out there but over time there has been a shift to make them look back down on earth for land monitoring purposes,” she said.
Dr Nakalembe said by monitoring land, the satellite captures data that can help distinguish crops, pastures, forests and water.
She said through the data generated constantly by satellite monitoring, people practising agriculture on a large scale can efficiently tell how their crops are doing and intervene at the right time in case of pests or diseases.