ACEMFS is the Africa Centre of Excellence for Mycotoxin and Food Safety.

The goal of the Centre is to build capacity via short and long term training programmes with a view to establishing an integrated prevention and control scheme for mycotoxins, food borne pathogens, veterinary drugs, pesticides and industrial residues through the entire value chain from farm to fork of the most consumed and economically competitive crops and their feed products(maize, rice, sorghum,millet, wheat, soybean, cassava, sesame, groundnut, animal feed, livestock products including milk, egg and fish, fruits and vegetables) in Central and West Africa.

The Education objective of the ACEMFS is to create an interdisciplinary, experiential education model that will prepare a cadre of future leaders focused on the rapidly emerging need for innovations at the nexus of food security, food safety, agricultural productivity and economics from local to global scales. The ACEMFS while leveraging on existing National Centre for Excellence for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology and food safety related postgraduate degree programmes in the University namely Biochemistry, Analytical Chemistry, Microbiology, Crop Breeding and Genetics, Food Processing Engineering, Nanotechnology, Animal Health, Public Health, Entomo-Toxicology Applied Mathematics, will establish new Masters and PhD programmes in Food Safety, Toxicology, Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics to fill current critical knowledge and skill gaps required to train a skilled and innovative work-force that would transform Africa’s natural resources into goods and services, driven by entrepreneurship and information and communication technology (ICT), to positively affect the economy and thus the quality of life of her people. The education package will also include workshops for farmers, manufacturers, food vendors and consumers on the occurrence, health and economic effects of mycotoxins, food borne pathogens, heavy metals, veterinary and pesticide residues, and industrial processing induced food toxicants in the food value chain and effective approaches for their prevention and control in food system. Short courses for industry and government food regulators will be conducted on food policy and regulations, ICT application in Food Safety and innovative technologies in mitigation of food toxicants.

The Research objectives of the ACEMFS are intervention strategies that will include developing early warning systems, fit-for-purpose good agricultural and food processing codes of practice, drought, pest and mycotoxin resistant cultivars, phytofungicides, bio-competitively eliminating mycotoxin producing fungi at the farm, nanobased mycotoxin feed binder and detoxifiers, and portable detection systems (Table 3). The activities will be realized with a view to establishing an integrated prevention and control scheme through the entire value chain from farm to fork of the most consumed and economically valuable crops and their food and feed products (i.e. maize, rice, sorghum, millet, wheat, soybean, cassava, sesame, groundnut, animal feed, livestock products including milk, fish and egg, fruits and vegetables). The ACEMFS will also only conduct regional monitoring of heavy metals, veterinary drug and pesticide residues as dictated by the needs of national food control systems and CODEX Alimentarius Commission for development of Standards.

• MTech/Ph. D Food Safety
• MTech/Ph.D. Toxicology and
• M. Tech/Ph.D.. Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics

• Candidates for admission to the M.Tech programmes must have five ‘O’ level credit passes in NECO/WAEC/NABTEB or its equivalent for international students which must include English/French, Mathematics and any other (three) relevant science subjects (Chemistry, Biology and Physics) at no more than two sittings.
• National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) certificate or NYSC exemption certificate (Nigerians only)
• Academic Transcripts.
• At least a Second Class Lower Honour Degree (50% Cumulative Score) or its equivalent for foreign candidates.
• A Third Class (Hons) degree with at least three years of post-qualification experience in the relevant field may be considered.
• A recognized PGD with a minimum of Lower Credit (CGPA of 2.50) in relevant fields with at least one year post-qualification experience may be considered.
• Three referees, one of whom must be his/her supervisor or an academic advisor