The 2nd phase of the South African edition of FemBioBiz Acceleration Programme concluded on Friday last week in Cape Town, with four female bio-entrepreneurs selected to represent SA and Lesotho at the annual SA Innovation Summit to be held in September.

TB meningitis is a major cause of death in Southern Africa, but the current diagnostic tests are not as quick or as sensitive as they need to be. Finding a sensitive, rapid test for TB meningitis has been elusive until now, but that is changing thanks to BioFISA II funding and researchers at Antrum Biotech.

Insects For Feed, Food and Fertiliser (I4F), a flagship project funded by NEPAD SANBio through the BioFISA II programme, is turning highly nutritious yellow mealworms into animal feed, food and other products.

When you think of insects, your first thoughts are probably of creepy crawlies; they might make you feel scared, grossed out or just uncomfortable. But a new project wants you to feel differently about insects, and more specifically mealworms. Could you ever think of these squirming bugs as food?

Prof Namrita Lall is a Professor and a Research Chair of Medicinal Plant Science at the University of Pretoria. She holds a PhD in Phytomedicine from the University of Pretoria and a BSc in Biological Sciences. The unifying research interests of Prof Lall include antituberculosis natural product leads from medicinal plants, susceptibility studies of other bacteria to medicinal plants, cytotoxicity of plant extracts/compounds, anticancer activity of medicinal plants, and antityrosinase (skin pigmentation, skin lightening) activity of plants.