The Yaounde Initiative Foundation is a “not-for-profit” organisation registered in the United Kingdom and Cameroon. It aims to overcome key practical constraints on socio-economic development in rural communities.

The Foundation’s goal is to improve the health and well being of communities in Africa, their agricultural production and the responsible protection of their rural environment.

The Yaounde Initiative is a unique programme, supported by the World Health Organization (WHO), with an innovative approach to reducing key limitations to socio-economic development by providing integrated solutions to:

1. human diseases carried by insect vectors such as:

• mosquitoes, transmitting malaria and other diseases
• blackflies, transmitting river blindness (onchocerciasis)
• in addition, attention is being given to severe nuisance insects and other minor vectors

2. crop losses caused by pests, diseases and weeds and the human and environmental problems caused by inappropriate use of pesticides to control these vectors and pests. The effect of this will be to promote socio economic development through improvements in:

• rural family health and labour output
• farm productivity and profitability
• farm produce quality and regulatory compliance
• human and environmental safety

The Foundation has its origins in an African Union agricultural pest management project initiated in 2000, funded by FAO and hosted by the Ministry of Agriculture in Cameroon. The concept of an independent, non-governmental organisation, which has now become “The Yaounde Initiative Foundation”, was endorsed in March 2003 in Yaounde at a conference of pan-African states, supported by FAO and the African Union.

The design and start-up phase of the Foundation has been supported by the Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture in Switzerland and Imperial College Consultants in the United Kingdom.

Collaborators and supporters

• The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
• The World Health Organization (WHO)
•  Imperial College Consultants Limited, UK
•  Ministry of Planning and Rural Development, Cameroon
•  The Syngenta Foundation for Sustainable Agriculture, Switzerland
•  The African Union (AU)
•  Imperial College London, UK
•  Natural Resources Institute (NRI) - University of Greenwich, UK
•  London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM)
•  TL Wiles and Associates Ltd, UK

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