icipe's Capacity Building Programme aims to enhance the capabilities of developing countries in the tropics and subtopics, particularly in Africa, for research and training in insect science to promote the development and utilisation of sustainable arthropod management technologies. Through its postgraduate and professional development schemes, the Capacity and Institutional Building programme makes a major contribution to icipe's research by sponsoring and facilitating postgraduate training, postdoctoral fellowship and visiting research positions at the Centre.
The main thrust of the Programme is geared toward three major areas of activity, directed primarily at African countries and developing countries:
Training of African nationals for leadership roles in insect science to enhance interactive technology generation and adaptation;
Enhancing national capacities for technology diffusion, adoption and utilization;
Facilitating dissemination and exchange of information.
This strategy has been translated in the following themes:
Postgraduate training at PhD and MSc levels, undertaken through two main programmes:
The African Regional Postgraduate Programme in Insect Science (ARPPIS)
The Dissertation Research Internship Programme (DRIP)
Professional development schemes for scientists of any nationality;
Non-degree training, consisting of research methodology courses for scientists, practitioner training courses for pest management practitioners, and industrial attachment for students in technical colleges and universities.
Environmental sustainability, a prerequisite to social and economic development, is a concept that icipe has wholly embraced since its founding 37 years ago.
In tropical Africa, the main roadblock to environmental conservation is poverty. Most farmers in the continent are too poor to rejuvenate the soil with nutrients or allow a fallow period. In other cases they are forced to over-harvest forests and natural vegetation for income, thereby over-stretching demands on the environment and consequently disrupting nature's regenerative potential. Removing people's reliance on the forest by engaging them in commercially viable projects, such as sericulture and apiculture and cultivation of medicinal plants, is one of icipe's latest ventures.
