A team from B2E – Blue Bioeconomy CoLAB, made up of Patrícia Gonçalves, Communications and Marketing Manager, and Ana Rita Ribeiro, Innovation and Projects Manager, spent an intense week in Kisumu, Kenya, working on the European project INNOECOFOOD. The goal: producing the educational videos that will support the training of women and young people at the African EcoHubs.

The videos in production are not institutional content. They are working tools, designed to make technical knowledge accessible to the people who operate directly within the project’s value chains: aquaculture, spirulina production, and insect farming, namely black soldier fly and crickets. It is on the basis of this content that 120 women and 120 young people will be trained to help drive the food transformation of their communities.

The focus on empowering women and young people is not incidental — it is structural to the project. Across Africa, women play a central role in food systems, but continue to face significant barriers in accessing technical knowledge, resources, and opportunities for economic advancement. INNOECOFOOD’s EcoHubs were designed precisely to reverse this logic: positioning women and young people not as passive beneficiaries, but as skilled operators and agents of change within their communities. The videos B2E CoLAB is producing are the instrument that makes this possible — complex technical knowledge translated into content that is accessible, relevant, and replicable.

During filming, the B2E CoLAB team interviewed specialists in insect farming and aquaculture, and spent time on the ground with local communities, documenting real processes and capturing the stories of those who make circular bioeconomy happen day to day. The spirulina component took place at the facilities of The Nasio Trust, a leading organization in Western Kenya known for its impact in education, health, livelihoods, and food security.

The project and its reach

Funded by the Horizon Europe programme, INNOECOFOOD brings together 21 partners from 11 countries across Europe and Africa, under the coordination of CIIMAR – the Interdisciplinary Centre of Marine and Environmental Research at the University of Porto. The project implements EcoHubs — sustainable agro-industrial centers that function as living laboratories in four African countries: Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Ghana.

These spaces test and apply innovative food production solutions, including closed-loop aquaculture technologies, spirulina production, and insect farming, also integrating post-harvest technologies and sustainable feeding practices. The mission is clear: to address global challenges such as hunger, poverty, and climate change, through approaches that strengthen the autonomy and development of local communities.

B2E CoLAB’s role

B2E CoLAB is responsible for creating educational content and communication strategies that support the capacity-building of EcoHub workers. The work carried out in Kenya is a central part of this mission: ensuring that the knowledge generated by the project is accessible, relevant, and replicable, and that it reaches the right people, in the right format, to make a difference on the ground.

This trip to Kisumu is yet another demonstration that blue bioeconomy is not built only in laboratories or reports. It is built with people, on the ground, with the conviction that science and communication have a decisive role to play in transforming food systems.