A senior Kenyan official said on Tuesday a solution to the perennial food insecurity in the East African region lies in infusing innovations in science and technology into agriculture, fish farming, livestock and dairy production to enhance food production and mitigate the effects of climate change.
Permanent Secretary David Nalo in the Ministry of East Africa Community (EAC) said unless East Africans moved away from subsistence ways of agricultural production, the region would continue to face challenges in food security and
producing surpluses for export.
"This was at the heart of the retreat of EAC heads of state in Arusha on Dec.
1-2, 2010 which noted the need for strategies to address food security and climate change in the region," he said during a meeting with Anders Vidhav, the Managing Director of Josab International, a Swedish water technology company.
The company, with investments in water purification is seeking a foothold in the East African region following the first Lake Victoria Investment Conference held in Mwanza in December 2010.
Nalo said the Lake Victoria Basin with a population of 38 million people was characterized by high poverty and lack of clean drinking water yet it was home to the second largest fresh water lake in the world and many rivers that drain into it.
The secretary said investing in the Basin and other parts of the country that lack access to clean drinking water would go a long way in helping the people of East Africa.
He added that the lakeside towns of Mwanza, Entebbe and Kisumu were ideal locations for Josab investments.
Nalo advised the company to pilot the new technology in a few water service boards of the respective East African Lake-side towns to ascertain the success rate of the innovation before replicating it to the rest of the region.
he said this was in line with the EAC Food Security Action Plan which promotes, among other things, raising efficiency in the use of water and energy resources.
Speaking during the meeting, Vidhav said his company was promoting a water purification technology based on the use of pressure filter without any mineral additives adding that this would help reduce the costs of running water systems in the region.
Vidhav said his company's entry point in the region will be the improvement the purification capacity of UN sponsored water projects in the Lake Victoria Basin.
He said Josabs International had already identified five pilot projects that it intended to undertake with Lake Victoria South Water Service Board courtesy of UNICEF and UN-Habitat as main sponsors.
He said his company will launch its operations in the region in the next three months after going through certification in line with the EAC
Standardization procedures.