Aflatoxins are a story that begins in the soil. In the fields where crops face unforgiving conditions, and in storage facilities that turn an everyday food into a silent threat. Then the story unfolds, following the supply chain into the city, entering homes with the same normality as food itself.
Yet Kenya, more than many other tropical countries, has chosen not to ignore them.
Over the years, it has built a level of public and institutional attention that is rare: clear regulatory limits, awareness campaigns, inspections—imperfect, certainly, but real. When contamination emerges, it is discussed. Products are recalled. A debate begins.
That is already a lot. It is still not enough.

Because aflatoxins are not an accident. They are a structural consequence.
They stem from molds that thrive precisely in the conditions that define much of the intertropical agricultural economy: heat, humidity, precarious storage, and long, fragmented supply chains. Corn, peanuts, oilseeds—everyday foods—become carriers of one of the most carcinogenic toxins known, resistant to cooking and invisible to any empirical testing.
The problem is that the system continues to chase the risk instead of preventing it.
Testing happens downstream, when the product is already on the shelves. Action is taken afterward, when the damage has already been done. The response is good, sometimes very good—but always too late.

And while Kenya is seriously trying to keep up, the global context is changing faster.
Climate change is expanding the geographic range of aflatoxins. The conditions that favor them are no longer exclusive to intertropical regions: they are shifting northward and southward. What is an African problem today will increasingly become a European, Asian, and American one tomorrow.
In this sense, Kenya is no exception. It is a harbinger.
And this is precisely where the debate gets interesting. Because a concrete public discussion is underway in the country—promoted in part by the millers’ association—on how to make food safety more than just a system of ex post controls. How to transform it into a widespread, continuous, accessible infrastructure.
It is in this context that, on April 14 and 15 in Nairobi, we will launch Aflabox as part of an annual conference entirely focused on aflatoxin management.
Not as yet another laboratory technology, but as a shift in perspective.
Aflabox stems from a simple observation: if the problem arises along the supply chain, the control must be within the supply chain. Not miles away, not weeks later. In the field, in warehouses, at collection points, in mills.
We need to make possible what is not possible today: rapid, reliable, non-destructive analyses that can also be used outside a centralized laboratory. To give operators—farmers, traders, processors—the ability to know immediately. To decide immediately.
It’s not just about technology. It’s about shifting the timing of control from “too late” to “just in time.”
Kenya has already demonstrated that the problem can be addressed openly. Now it can demonstrate that it can be managed differently.
Because aflatoxins aren’t going away. But the way we deal with them can change radically. And perhaps, for once, change can start exactly where the problem is most visible. And most urgent.