African Insect Science for Food and Health

icipe’s mission is to help alleviate poverty, ensure food security and improve the overall health status of peoples of the tropics, by developing and extending management tools and strategies for harmful and useful arthropods, while preserving the natural resource base through research and capacity building.

The Centre’s vision is to pioneer global science in entomology, to improve the well being and resilience of people and the environment to the challenges of a changing world, through innovative and applied research, alongside deep exploratory study, impact assessment, evaluation and sustainable capacity building.

Headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya, icipe was established in 1970, to address this very paradox of insects and accompanying challenges. The Centre’s mission is to use insect science for sustainable development, to ensure food security and improve the overall health of communities in Africa by addressing the interlinked problems of poverty, poor health, low agricultural productivity and environmental degradation.

Since its founding, icipe has remained committed to developing and disseminating environmentally safe, affordable, acceptable and accessible tools and strategies to control insect pests and disease vectors. icipe’s mandate further extends to the sustainable conservation and utilisation of Africa’s rich biodiversity.

icipe is the only international institution in Africa working primarily on arthropods. Therefore capacity building of individual researchers and institutions in Africa is an integral part of all the Centre’s research and development activities. icipe also aims to empower women, harness the youth and build capacity to use, transfer and teach the Centre’s technologies.