Synopsis

Daniel Wanjama, founder and coordinator at Seed Savers Network in Kenya, shares how his upbringing in rural Africa set him on a path to help farmers find better ways to nutritional security. 

In the third of a three-part episode about East African seed systems, Daniel describes how his personal experience with food security inspired him to found Seed Savers Network, which smallholder African farmers gain access to native crop seeds and prevents local landraces of a vegetables and cereal crops from being lost. He explains how the farmers in his network support each other by producing and sharing cassava, bean and indigenous vegetable seed and discusses how network farmers are trained to help ensure that they distribute high-quality seeds. We also learn how intellectual property rights can pose challenges for seed saving programs in Africa.