How innovation led to a catnip plant-based mosquito repellent to fight malaria in eastern Africa

The project also had a strong legitimacy-building function, in that the project was accepted as fair and rightful by the local community and by Burundian government authorities. The project built its legitimacy by creating jobs and by including local community stakeholders, such as smallholder farmers and women , in catnip production and processing.

Another strong function of the project included knowledge development and diffusion. The project actively engaged in conducting successful R&D activities. The project moved forward in the innovation process, demonstrating the viability of the catnip repellent, a functional value chain and product development pathways.

The project also made visible the importance of collaboration with different actors to develop the necessary knowledge and diffuse it in order to enhance the adoption and commercialization of the product. This study shows that innovation in the case of the catnip antimalarial can be based on local R&D, challenging the conventional belief that innovation in least-developed countries is mostly an imitation of existing knowledge and innovation from developed countries. The project also initiated the process of establishing a certification standard with the Burundi Bureau of Standards and Quality Control for registering bio-based health products for various purposes.

The role of icipe, the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology, was vital in the project, as the organization provided know-how on various technical aspects of the catnip malaria repellent and its product formulation. Based in Nairobi, Kenya, this center is a regional resource.

The BioInnovate Africa secretariat, also in Nairobi, was also central in linking and supporting project actors, ensuring that they were able to play their complementary roles. It also backstopped building capacity for the management of the catnip project innovation consortia.

BioInnovate Africa has been crucial in funding the project and ensuring linkages at the regional level between public sector, market and international research institution actors, which catalysed the innovation process. However, BioInnovate Africa could not support in the scaling up and commercialization of innovative products.