US Based Soybean Innovation Lab Impacts in Africa

Dr. Peter Goldsmith leads the US Soybean Innovation Lab, which launched in 2013, with support from the federal government to help build a foundation for soybean market development in Sub-Saharan Africa. At the time, soybeans were almost entirely unfamiliar in the region, but with Africa emerging as a fast growing market, the opportunity for growth was clear.

“The industry operated livestock feeds as well as food oil using other raw materials, not soy. So that was our mission in 2013 when we started, and we've been very successful, been renewed a couple of times, and we started in principally in one country, focused in Ghana, in West Africa and our we've been successful, pulled into 30 countries.”

The initiative’s objective was to open potential markets for us soybeans.

“You know, certainly the federal government was thinking about the strategic value of Africa using soy as the industrial standard for food oil, for food products, baked products, and then on the protein side, ingredients, lecithin, animal feeds, and having soy be the protein of choice, meaning that the end users would prefer soy as their number one raw material,” as well as the number one feed ingredient source.