International Plant Biotechnology Outreach (IPBO)

The International Plant Biotechnology Outreach (VIB-IPBO) is an outreach cell established in 2000 as a partnership of the Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie (VIB), a world-leading life sciences research institute based in Flanders (Belgium), and Ghent University (UGent). Over the last twenty years, the VIB-IPBO’s Vision is to ‘contribute to the participatory engagement of agricultural communities and local actors in LDE to new sustainable agricultural systems, to enable a healthy planet with a sound social, cultural, economic and environmental development.”

The organization’s objective is to contribute to overthrowing some of the main barriers identified in transferring agro-biotechnological innovations and knowledge to promote food and nutrition security among women and men smallholder farmers in the least developed economies (LDE) and promote scientific advances in agriculture by enhancing researchers’ and technical experts’ capacity by fostering scientific collaboration between African and Belgian organizations and developing enabling policies for technology exchange. VIB-IPBO’s 2021-2030 Mission focuses on ‘becoming a reference partner to accelerate the bilateral EU-Africa international scientific cooperation on agro-biotechnology, towards promoting and exchanging context-relevant scientific knowledge and technologies for sustainable agriculture.’