Core Country Coordinators

Endalkachew Wolde-meskel (E.Woldemeskel@cgiar.org) is a scientist at ILRI (International Livestock Research Institute) and a country coordinator for N2Africa project in Ethiopia (WWW.N2Africa.org). He has worked for over two decades in research and academia; at Hawassa University, Ethiopia as an Associate Professor of Soil Microbiology and coordinator for north-south collaborative projects on legume-rhizobium symbiosis and cyanobacteria. He has been a visiting scientist and researcher at various universities in Europe and N. America and supervised over 50 MSc and PhD students in his area of specialization. His main focus is on soil fertility, C & N transformation and N fixation, on intensification of crop-livestock systems through integration of legumes in farming systems. He has extensive experiences on exploration of biodiversity of rhizobia where he identified several novel genospecies and described new species. Endalkachew obtained his PhD from Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway and an MPhil from University of Wales, Bangor, UK, published and co-authored large number of scientific papers in pear reviewed international journals https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=list_works&hl=en&user=Cp6W7BEAAAAJ&gmla

Freddy Baijukya is a System and Legume Agronomist -and leader of East and Central Africa Hub of N2Africa project. Prior to that, he was the Principal Research Scientist in the Department of Research and Development, Ministry of Agriculture, Food Security and Cooperatives in Tanzania. From 2005 to 2009 he worked with FAO-UN, analyzing trans-boundary biosecurity and ecosystems threats of agricultural importance in the Tanzania-Uganda-Rwanda-Burundi inter-phase systems. He obtained his Ph.D. (Agronomy/Soil fertility) in 2004, in the C.T. de Wit Graduate school for Production Ecology and Resource Conservation (PE&RC) at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. His work focused on role of legumes in provision of fodder and building soil fertility in the banana-based farming systems of Great Lake region of Africa. Dr. F. Baijukya has more than 18 years of agricultural research and development focusing on smallholder farmers in rural societies of Africa and participated in the EU-funded project on "Exploring tradeoffs around farming livelihoods and the environment: the AfricaNUANCES led by Wageningen University. He has published over 15 papers in peer reviewed International Journals and he has co-supervised 8 MSc. and 2 PhD. students from sub-Sahara Africa.

Nkeki Kamai was educated at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria (1984 BSc) and University of Maiduguri, Maiduguri, Nigeria (1994 MSc Crop science and 2010 Doctorate degree in Crop Physiology and Production and System Agronomy). He has extensive experience spanning over 28 years, in the fields of agronomy, crop science, natural resource management, stress physiology and farmer participatory evaluation of technologies, which enabled him to initiate, design and efficiently implement research and development-oriented project activities in the Nigeria savannas. His areas of interests include crop and natural resource management, general and systems agronomy, crop and land management, crop physiology and crop adaptation for biotic and abiotic stresses. Kamai was lecturer at the University of Maiduguri, before joining IITA from 2015 to date. Prior to that he worked as a Deputy Director, Borno State Agricultural Program (1989-2000); and as a Research Supervisor (2006-2009) in one of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) implemented projects tagged “Promoting Sustainable Agriculture in Borno State’’ (PROSAB). Within N2Africa he is Country Coordinator for Nigeria.

Dr. Kamai has published over 10 journal articles. He was the Agronomist for the Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa (DTMA) project (2008 - 2014), Agronomist/Seed specialist of West and Central Africa Council for the Agricultural Research and Development (WECARD/CORAF) Maize Research and Development Project (2010 – 2014), for the Harvest Plus Challenge Program (2010 to 2014) and for Genetic Improvement of Cowpea for Striga Resistance using Molecular tools project (2010 to 2015).

Peter Ebanyat is a legume agronomist with extensive teaching and research experience in soil fertility management and productivity improvement of smallholder farming systems gained while working at Makerere University. He holds a PhD from Wageningen University, The Netherlands and has (co-) supervised Masters and PhD students, and co-authored 18 peer reviewed journal articles. He currently coordinates the N2Africa Project at IITA-Uganda and his research interests are in approaches for sustainable intensification of smallholder cropping systems.