Minael Mjema

For Minael Mjema, inclusive research means ensuring every farmer has an equal opportunity to participate.

As a Social Scientist and On-Farm Research Coordinator, she works across Tanzania and other African countries to make on-farm research accessible to diverse farming communities. Her belief that “distance should never be a reason for someone to be left out” takes her wherever the research needs to go.

Minael leads field and enumerator teams, designs and implements socio-economic and farmer-feedback surveys, and oversees the collection of high-quality image and audio data that supports AI-driven crop phenotyping and farmer preference analysis. Through projects such as ARTEMIS and NDIZI, she works at the intersection of agriculture, social science, digital innovation, and AI to make crop breeding and farmer-centered research more efficient, scalable, and inclusive across Africa.

Her approach is relationships-first: sitting with communities, listening to what is already happening on their farms, understanding their priorities, and building trust before a trial begins.

She is equally committed to creating opportunities for rural youth to participate in agricultural research, helping them develop practical skills in digital and field-based data collection and giving them a meaningful role in agricultural innovation.