Issue 21: November-December 2002

Natural products scientists create West African network

UNU/INRA director Prof. Uzo Mokwunye (front right) and the foundation members of the West African Network of Natural Product Scientists pictured after their recent meeting.

Natural products scientists from West Africa are banding together to strengthen their capacity to add value to the sub-region's abundant natural production. This follows a recent meeting of natural products scientists from Nigeria, Cameroon and Ghana held at Ghana's Elmina Beach Resort and organised by UNU Institute for Natural Resources in Africa (UNU/INRA) in collaboration with the International Foundation for Science (IFS) and the Committee on Science and Technology in Developing Countries (COSTED)

The objectives of the new West Africa Network of Natural Products Scientists (WANNPRES) are to:

• Bring together and strengthen the capacity and capabilities of natural product research scientists in the West Africa sub-region.

• Encourage collaboration in all areas of natural product research within the sub-region.

• Exchange information among scientists working on different aspects of natural product research.

• Ensure mobility of scientists among the various laboratories for effective collaboration.

• Help develop centers for excellence in the different areas of natural products research.

"The people of West Africa have not yet benefited fully from the area's huge variety of natural products, mainly because most are exploited and sold without adding value to them," said Prof. Uzo Mokwunye, Director of UNU/INRA. 

"Transforming these products into wealth will require successful application of science and technology, imaginative and creative institutions as well as policies and actions at the local and sub-regional levels. While African countries may not have the financial and human resources needed to mount drug discovery programmes, the clinically useful plants serve as useful input to biomedical research to address tropical diseases."

Prof. Mokwunye said that enhanced local scientific capacity will enable African countries to form credible partnerships with international pharmaceutical firms and increase the probability rate and at the same time reduce the cost of discovering new drugs from Africa’s biological resources.

Because individual countries in the sub-region are generally small, there was a need for a network of natural product scientists to facilitate exchange of ideas and information, technology and resources, both human and material.

Members of WANPRESS are being encouraged to become members of the UNU/INRA College of Research Associates (CRA), a network open to African scientists, academics and technologists who share UNU/INRA’s commitment to science, technology, education and training as the pathway to better management and utilization of Africa’s natural resources for development and poverty reduction.

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