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The African Pollinator Initiative (API) was founded in January 1999, at the First Congress of the Systematics Society of South Africa (SSSA), in Stellenbosch, South Africa. It had two main purposes:
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To facilitate African country participation in the International Pollinator Initiative’s (IPI) global pollinator project (Conservation and management of Pollinators for Sustainable Agriculture, Through an Ecosystem Approach, IPI/GEF).
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To improve pollinator biodiversity conservation, and the pollination of crops and wild plants through networking.
Three African countries agreed to participate in IPI/GEF, namely, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa. The other IPI/GEF countries are Brazil, India, Nepal and Pakistan. A proposal has been submitted to the Global Environment Facility (GEF). Watch this space for the result. The responsible people in each country are: Peter Kwapong (Ghana), Wanja Kinuthia (Kenya), and John Donaldson and Ingrid Nanni (South Africa).
In February 2002 API held its First Meeting in Nairobi, Kenya. The meeting developed an API Plan of Action (API-POA, Publications 1), and established a Steering Committee, their names and addresses are in API-POA. The committees task was to develop the IPI/GEF project proposal. This took four years. Now API must re-focus and concentrate on:
- The implementation of IPI/GEF
- Promoting activities included in the API-POA that are not included in IPI/GEF
- Networking between people interested in pollinators and pollination in Africa
- The election of a new API Steering Committee.
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