CRFS and One Health Grantees at International Convening

In West Africa, the principal investigators of seven projects of CRFS Agroecology and One Health cohort participated in the Agroecology and One Health panel at the 2026 SIST edition (Sept 21–25, 2016) lead by Batamaka SOMÉ. The panel enlisted an external one health expert as a discussant, who used very sharp and thoughtful questions to probe the presenters who provided very sound answers and clarifications to the satisfaction of the audience of over 500 participants. The panel was given prominent visibility, along with some of CRFS work, as it came right after the keynote speech of the symposium.

SIST is the biennial international symposium on Science and Technology organized by Burkina Faso’s public umbrella research institution, CNRST—the National Center for Research and Technology—which is host to some of CRFS grantee institutions. CRFS contributed $10,000 to the SIST 2026 organization and was acknowledged both during the official opening speech as well as on the official banner.

In addition to sharing ongoing research findings to a diverse audience of researchers, students, and NGO leaders, the panel also constituted an eye-opener to the audience by contextualizing the one health approach in agroecology as the fact of managing farming and food systems in a way that acknowledges the connections between human health, animal health, plant health, and the ecosystem health.

Based on the impressive presentations, the takeaway of the panel is that one health is about everybody because contamination of human food or animal feed will ultimately affect the health of the next actor in the chain and get back to the other actors.

The panel also allowed those in attendance to spot the natural synergies emerging from the presentations and allowed non-CRFS researchers to connect with some of the panelists for further collaboration.