Leadership Team

Bernard Vanlauwe joined IITA in Kenya in March 2012 to lead the Central Africa hub and the Natural Resource Management research area. In this capacity, he is also having an oversight role in the Humidtropics, the Water, Land, and Ecosystems, and the CCAFS CGIAR Research Programs. Prior to this recent appointment, he was the leader of the Integrated Soil Fertility Management (ISFM) program of the Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility research area of CIAT (TSBF-CIAT). He joined CIAT-TSBF in 2001 and led the development, adaptation, and dissemination of best ISFM options in various agro-ecological zones in sub-Saharan Africa. In September 2010, he obtained a Visiting Professor position at the Swedish Agricultural University in Uppsala in the Soils and Environment Department. Before, he worked at IITA in Nigeria (1991 – 2000) and the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium (1989-1991), focusing on unraveling the mechanisms underlying nutrient and soil organic matter dynamics in tropical agro-ecosystems. In that context, he obtained his PhD in 1996 in Applied Biological Sciences. He has published over 140 papers in scientific journals and over 160 in other forms and has (co-) supervised over 40 PhD and over 60 MSc students.

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.

Ken Giller is Professor Plant Production Systems at Wageningen University, Department of Plant Sciences. He leads a group of scientists with profound experience in systems analysis and simulation modelling of scenarios of change. Ken’s research has focused on nitrogen in tropical legumes and he is author of the standard text “Nitrogen Fixation in Tropical Cropping Systems” that was published in second edition in 2001 by CAB International. Currently he is scientific leader of the interdisciplinary project "Competing Claims on Natural Resources: Overcoming Mismatches in Resource Use from a Multi-Scale Perspective (http://www.competingclaims.nl/)”, and he led the EU-funded project on "Exploring tradeoffs around farming livelihoods and the environment: the AfricaNUANCES framework (http://www.africanuances.nl/)" from 2004-2008. Ken was formerly Professor of Soil Science at the University of Zimbabwe (1998-2001). Prior to that he held a personal professorship at the University of London (Wye College). He has worked extensively in tropical regions of South and South-east Asia, Latin America and Africa, but his focus for the past 25 years has been on smallholder farming systems in sub-Saharan Africa. Ken has supervised some 68 PhD students, including > 30 from Africa. He has 5 books, more than 250 papers in peer-reviewed, international journals and over 70 book chapters.