Laurence Defrise (Enabel, Belgium) obtained a Master's Degree in Agriculture and Rural Development at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Brussels, Belgium) in 2003. Then she participated in a local development project in Burkina Faso (Service Laïque au Développement, Brussels, Belgium). From 2004 to 2006, she was involved in a European Commission project on mangrove in Senegal. Then she was appointed Sustainability Officer in the Belgium-based Impact Investing Company Durabilis. As a Rural Development Expert at the Belgian Development Agency (Enabel), she carried out different missions in partner countries. From 2011 until 2015, she worked as a technical assistant of the non-profit association “Agronomes et Vétérinaires sans Frontières” on a project on land management in Madagascar. In 2020, she obtained her Ph.D. in Geography and Agricultural Development from the Doctoral School ABIES (Agriculture, Food, Biology, Environment, Health), co-accredited by the University Paris-Saclay (AgroParisTech; Paris, France). Since then, she joined Enabel as a climate smart agriculture expert. Her areas of expertise (based on fieldwork) include sustainable food system, agroecology, land tenure security, land use planning and climate adaptation.

Ana Luísa Garcia-Oliveira (ISA, University of Lisbon) is an Agronomic Engineer (Instituto Superior de Agronomia, University of Lisbon), and obtained her MSc at Chinese Agricultural University (Beijing, China) in 2008, working on quantitative genetics for increased micronutrient levels in rice. With a very competitive fellowship from the Portugese Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, she started her PhD at the Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro (UTAD) (Vila Real, Portugal) on resistance to aluminium (Al) in bread wheat and collaborated with scientists at Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain), Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica António Xavier (Lisboa, Portugal), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spain), and El Instituto de Agricultura Sostenible (Cordoba, Spain). In 2014 she obtained the Early Career Award from the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium for the discovery of the second functional marker for Al tolerance in wheat. After her Ph.D., she stayed a short time at UTAD studying carotenoids and antioxidants in bread and durum wheat. From 2017 to 2019 she was a postdoctoral researcher at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Nairobi (Kenya) working on cassava resistance to cassava brown streak disease with Kenyan, Tanzanian, and Ugandan partners, whereafter she went to IITA Headquarters (Ibadan, Nigeria) for a 2-year post-doc on maize. In 2018 she became an Associate Scientist studying molecular topics on maize, cowpea, soybean, and Africa Yam bean, among which the first study on Striga quantitative genetics was published in 2020. Dr. Garcia-Oliveira’s research interests include plant breeding and quantitative genetics for important traits related to plant homeostasis, both from a nutritional and plant stress adaptation point of view. Since 2021, she is the Regional Genotyping Coordinator for Africa from the Excellence in Breeding (EiB) Platform, headquartered at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) (Nairobi, Kenya) assisting in creating free databases for low-density sequencing-validated Kompetitive allele specific PCR (KASP) markers, logistics and training.

Dr Sylvester O. Oikeh (Nigeria) has a Bachelor of Agriculture degree in Horticulture and a MSc degree in Crop Science from the University of Nigeria (Nssuka, Nigeria). In 1996, he obtained his Ph.D. in Soil Science, specialization Soil Fertility and Plant Nutrition from the Ahmadu Bello University (Zaria, Nigeria). In 2001, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University’s USDA Plant, Soil and Nutrition Laboratory (Ithaca, NY, USA) and a Postgraduate Diploma in Irrigation Engineering from the Centre for Irrigation Engineering of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium). Between 1990 and 2003, he held various positions, including as a German Technical Cooperation Agency (GTZ) Research Fellow, a consultant agronomist, and a visiting maize scientist involved in collaborative research investigating micronutrient enhancement of tropical maize. He worked at the Africa Rice Centre for five years as a Principal Scientist/Soil-Fertility Agronomist and for ten years as Project Leader at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). He developed four integrated soil fertility management packages and two farmer handbooks to support the deployment of the New Rice for Africa (NERICA). Since 2009 he joined the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) and was appointed as a Project Manager for the Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA, now TELA Maize) Project and coordinates the operational management and monitors the implementation of activities across ten public and private sector organizations in seven African countries.

Bernard Vanlauwe (Belgium) obtained his MSc degree in 1989 at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium). After a short period as Research Assistant, he joined the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Ibadan (Nigeria), focusing on unraveling the mechanisms underlying nutrient and soil organic matter dynamics in tropical agro-ecosystems. In 1996, he obtained his Ph.D. in Applied Biological Sciences at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium). From 2001 to 2012, he was appointed principal scientist and group leader of the Integrated Soil Fertility Management (ISFM) program of the Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility research area of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (TSBF-CIAT). In September 2010, the obtained a Visiting Professor position at the Swedish Agricultural University in Uppsala in the Soils and Environment Department. Since March 2012, he joined IITA in Nairobi (Kenya) as a Results for Development Director to lead the for Central Africa hub and the Natural Resource Management research. He has published over 200 papers in scientific journals and over 180 in other forms and has (co-) supervised over 40 PhD and over 60 MSc students. Currently, he is facilitating the development of an Excellence in Agronomy 2030 Initiative as part of the One CGIAR (Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers) reform process.

Dr Robert Zougmoré (Burkina Faso) graduated in 1991 as an Engineer of Rural Development with specialization in Agronomy from the University of Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) and in 2003 he obtained his Ph.D. in Production Ecology & Resources Conservation in 2003 at the Wageningen University (The Netherlands). From 1992 to 2007, he was employed as Research Assistant at the Environmental Institute for Agricultural Research (INERA) (Burkina Faso) and he coordinated the INERA research activities on soil and water conservation for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) Special Program on Conservation of Water and Soils/Agroforestry (CES/AGF) in the Central Plateau of Burkina Faso. He was also a part-time lecturer at the Universities of Cape Coast (Ghana), Niamey (Niger), and Bobo-Dioulasso (Burkina Faso), the Agriculture, Hydrology, Meteorology Research Center (Niamey, Niger), and Rural Polytechnic Institute of Training and Applied Research (Katibougou, Mali). He has also been the Secretary-General of the Africa Soil Science Society. He spent one year as a Post-Doc at the Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Science (JIRCAS; Tsukuba, Japan), working on the benefit of conservation agriculture for soil and water conservation. In 2009 he was a senior staff member within the Environment Program of the Sahara & Sahel Observatory (Tunis, Tunisia) and coordinated a joint-funded International Development Research Center/Development for International Development (IDRC/DFID) project. Since 2010, he is the Africa Program leader of the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS), based at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in Bamako (Mali). He is defining and overseeing the strategic directions for the CCAFS research in the region and coordinates actions for the coherent implementation of regional activities from the participating CGIAR Centres and other regional and national partners. His areas of expertise are soil erosion, integrated soil, water and nutrient management options and their economic benefits, and climate-smart agriculture.