Hunger on a massive scale is threatening East Africa. Drought has contributed to leaving 16 million people in the region on the brink of starvation and in urgent need of food. People are already dying in South Sudan and Somalia. In Kenya, the government declared a national emergency as Ethiopia battles a new wave of drought following the strongest El Nino on record. It is for this reason that baby steps such as The East Africa Postharvest Technologies Competition 2017 (EAPTC-2017) should be encouraged.

The East Africa Postharvest Technologies Competition 2017 (EAPTC-2017) that is currently in session in Tanzania aims to identify scalable postharvest technologies in East Africa for wider dissemination. It is featuring over 40 postharvest technologies from which judges will select the Top 25 to proceed to the East Africa Postharvest Technologies Exhibition set for early May 2017. The EAPTC-2017 seeks to identify postharvest innovations and technologies that demonstrate potential for scale up and offer practical solutions to challenges of postharvest food loss and waste across agricultural value chains in the region. It is believed that nurturing them will make hunger a thing of the past in the region.