Esther Ngumbi grew up in a rural farming community on the Kenyan coast, an area where heat and drought have made a major impact in recent years.
Ngumbi is the daughter of a farmer and a teacher; at age seven she was given a patch of land by the river, on which she started to grow cabbages. She nurtured them and watched them grow, but then the rains came, the river rose up and eventually swamped her patch, destroying her cabbages!
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| photo: Inter Press Service |
She has been a first hand witness to the challenges faced by farmers in areas like this; the dependence on the rains, unhealthy soils, insect pests and plant diseases. There is often no harvest......
Her interest in agriculture and trying to make improvements that would benefit communities like hers, led Ngumbi to be the first woman in her area to earn their doctorate. Having worked hard to get her degree and masters at Kenyatta University, she ended earning her doctorate and work as a researcher at Auburn University in the US, in the Department of Entomology and Plant Pathogens, looking into ways of making crops more drought-resistant. This increases their yield and that means more money for the farmers - something that could then be invested into more technology to help conserve their water and soil.
Her work saw her sampling the crops that seemed to thrive in areas where others were becoming stressed. Microbes can form mutually beneficial associations with plants like maize, tomatoes and peppers, this makes the soil more fertile, fights off stressors like pests and makes them more resistant to temperature fluctuations.
"In the African continent, in particular, it is hard to overemphasise the anticipated benefits from the research we are conducting. Currently, 65% of soils are degraded, costing African farmers $68bn per year. Healthy soils are the foundation to resilient and sustainable agricultural systems. Resilient agricultural systems will allow Africa to grow the crops it needs to feed its population and hence contribute to the eradication of hunger."
In 2012, Ngumbi set up Spring Break Kenya, an organisation that mobilises university students in Kenya into doing spells of public service to benefit others. The same year also saw the creation of the Dr. Ndumi Faulu Academy (with her parents) to ensure that children in Kenya can get a quality education, and with facilities that include a science lab to try and inspire the next generation of women scientists.
Oyeska Greens was established in 2014. This is an agricultural focused start-up organisation that empowers those same coastal Kenyan farmers that she grew up around. The aim of Oyeska Greens is to try and make Kenya a hub for agriculture, green house technology, entrepreneurism and smart marketing.
Earlier this year, Ngumbi moved from Auburn to become a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaigne. She holds three U.S. patents based around her work of applying microbes to increase plant tolerance.
In 2018 she was awarded the Society of Experimental Biologists Presidents Medal. Prior to that, she has also received a 2017 Women of Courage Award and an Emerging Sustainability Leader Award (the same year).
She spends time mentoring young leaders and women scientists through the Spring Break Kenya, the Clinton Global Initiative University and also the President Obama Young African Leadership programme. In this way, she has managed to work with over 5,000 young people.
She is especially proud of the way her work has benefitted women back in Kenya (and beyond);
"In Africa, they [women] account for up to 60% of the agricultural labour force. They are farmers. My research allows them to reap the benefits of the hard work they put in on their farms."
She sees a major focus being on the fact that women only make up 30% of scientists. The challenges of dealing with this vary by location, and Esther believes that solutions need to be specifically targeted and by listening to the girls themselves.
Research:
https://www.estherngumbi.com/
https://croplife.org/industry-profile/esther-ngumbi/
https://www.aauw.org/article/4-questions-for-esther-ngumbi-entomologist-extraordinaire/
https://www.muonevents.com/heroes-of-sustainability/
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