ANNE

MAINA

Anne Wanjiku Maina is a development worker who has been actively working on challenging false solutions being pushed in Africa like Genetically Engineering, the push for a green revolution in Africa, biofuels and carbon markets as a strategy to cope with climate change in Africa. Anne articulates these issues at the national, regional and international level in forums such as the UNFCCC and the CBD.  She is continuously engaged in conducting capacity building and campaigning on these issues in eastern, southern and West Africa.

Anne is a holder of a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and is an alumna of International Biosafety Course from University of Tromso, Norway; and she is also an alumnae of International Course on Hazard Identification of Transgenic Gene Flow and Risks Assessment of GMOs also from University of Tromso, Norway. She has over eight year’s experience working with various civil society organisations and regional networks such as the African Biodiversity Network (ABN), Participatory Ecological Land use Management (PELUM) Association on campaigning, advocacy and lobbying and other work. She has acquired skills in negotiation techniques, capacity building, policy analysis and research, lobbying and advocacy.

She has participated in several assignments with national and international organizations including the Tokyo International Conference for Development (TICAD IV), FIAN fact finding mission on the Human Right to Food, World Congress for Rural Women in Durban among others. She has been very instrumental in the growth and development of the Eastern and Southern Africa Small Scale Farmers’ Forum (FORUM), the birth of Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA) and other networks in Africa.

Anne is currently working for the Kenya Biodiversity Coalition (KBioC) now registered as the Biodiversity and Biosafety Association of Kenya (BIBA-K) based in Thika, Kenya.

BIBA Kenya's main objective is to ensure the public is AWARE and ALERT on issues of concern on environment, agriculture, livestock, food safety and health and biodiversity.  BIBA-K works with small scale farmers and has been calling upon the Kenya government, as well as other African governments, to tread carefully before embracing Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs).