Chinenye Marvellous Agbo
Arrell Scholar, School of Environmental Design and Rural Development
Chinenye Marvellous Agbo is completing her M.Sc. in Capacity Development and Extension with International Development Studies in the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, under the supervision of Dr. Ataharul Chowdhury. Chinenye is a Nigerian entrepreneur, researcher and agri-food innovator based in Kigali, Rwanda. She is the co-founder and CEO of Lima Aja, a digital agricultural marketplace connecting smallholder farmers directly to buyers across Rwanda, and co-founder of Taretu Engitok Smart Farms, a women-led agritech venture empowering Maasai women farmers through smart agriculture and vertical farming in Tanzania.
Chinenye graduated with First Class Honours in Global Challenges from the African Leadership University in Kigali in 2024, where her undergraduate research earned the highest distinction in her cohort. Prior to founding her ventures, she interned with the Emirates Environmental Group in Dubai and the Capitals Coalition in the Serengeti.
Growing up in Enugu, Nigeria, Chinenye witnessed firsthand the cost of innovation failing to reach the communities it was designed to serve. She believes the difference between a promising innovation and real change is almost never the technology itself, but whether that technology is genuinely adopted by the people who need it most.
Chinenye’s research aims to reduce food loss and strengthen smallholder farming systems through the responsible adoption of digital agricultural technologies. Building on her experience as an agri-food entrepreneur in Rwanda and Tanzania, her work examines how AI photo recognition technology can help reduce food loss at the point of aggregation, using Lima Aja as a live case study. She seeks to identify the social and institutional conditions that enable sustained adoption of AI-driven tools in smallholder farming communities. Africa bears over 40% of global food losses yet remains underrepresented in this literature, and Chinenye hopes her findings will generate practical recommendations for governments, development organizations and investors across Sub-Saharan Africa, contributing to AFI’s vision of sustainable, healthy and resilient food systems.
Learn more about Arrell ScholarshipsWhy become an Arrell Scholar?
For Chinenye, becoming an Arrell Scholar means joining a community of researchers, practitioners and partners who believe, as she does, that research without real-world application is just noise. As a founder and researcher, the University of Guelph stood out as the place where her work could grow in both evidence and impact simultaneously. The Ontario Agricultural College’s global standing in food and agricultural science gives her research the academic credibility and rigour it demands, while AFI’s network of expertise and focus on real-world impact grounds it in practice. Chinenye is excited to develop as a researcher and innovator at the intersection of digital agricultural innovation and food systems policy in Africa, based at the University of Guelph, Canada’s Food University.
Want to learn more about Arrell Scholarships?
Arrell Food Institute provides graduate students the opportunity to engage in an experiential learning program that will prepare them to be leaders in the agri-food sector and address key agriculture and food challenges.rnrnArrell Scholarships are currently not open for applications. Please check back for updates.