Nigatu Regassa, PhD (Adjunct Professor, University of Saskatchewan; Professor, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia)
Women-Led Pulse Agriculture for Enhanced Household Nutrition Security in East African Countries: A Review

Nigatu Regassa Geda is Demographer and Epidemiologist by Profession. He has got M Sc. Degree in Demography from Addis Ababa University (2001) and PhD in Population Studies from International Institute for Population Sciences (Mumbai). He also completed another Ph. D degree in the broad areas of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at one of the Prestigious institutions of Canada, school of Public Health, University of Saskatchewan. Nigatu has pursued his post-doctoral certification in Food Security, Gender and Environment at Oklahoma State University, USA, in 2011.

He started his career in 1996 at the then College of Agriculture (now part of Hawassa University) as Graduate Assistant and became full professor in April 2012. He taught several courses to undergraduate and graduate classes (including population and environment, advanced research methods, family demography, sociology and rural development, education and pedagogy). Besides his teaching career, Nigatu was actively engaged in different leadership positions at Hawassa University; Assistant dean of students, head of the department of rural development, Associate Vice President for Academic Programs, Academic Programs and Quality Assurance Director, and later Vice President of the University until he left for Canada in 2013/2014. During the 18 years of his employment at Hawassa University (1996-2014), Nigatu was active in various research and community engagements having quite significant monetary and academic values to Ethiopia. He won several international and local grants and represented the university and the education sector at many international fora.

After 2014, Nigatu moved to Canada and was positioned as visiting researcher, later research officer at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada (2014-2018). In 2018, he worked as consultant for IFAD (a UN agency in Rome) to monitor several development projects for Africa. He also worked with Nutrition International (formerly Micronutrient International, Ottawa, Canada) as consultant (2019).

Since November 2019, Nigatu was employed as teaching staff at CPS. During his stay in the Center for Population Studies for three years, he handled several courses including advanced research method, Advanced Techniques of Demographic Analysis, Epidemiological methods in Population studies, and Principles of Population.  During the last one year, Nigatu is working as as Editor-in-Chief of the Ethiopian Journal of Development Research (EJDR). He is also honorary staff of Hawassa University, and adjunct professor at the College of Pharmacy and Nutrition, University of Saskatchewan (Canada),

During his long years of academic and research journey, he established strong networks with many international and national institutions. Nigatu was able to publish more than 75 research articles in international peer reviewed journals in wide range of multidisciplinary issues. His research interest  includes, but not limited to, fertility, mortality, migration, gender and women empowerment, nutrition and food security, resilience, youth and development,  epidemiology and disease burden, nutrition sensitive agriculture, population projection and others.

Esayas Bekele, PhD (University of Saskatchewan) Pulse Crop Harvest and Post-Harvest Practices in Four East African Countries: A Review

Esayas Bekele obtained a PhD in Nutrition from the University of Saskatchewan. He examined the use of a whole-grain pulse-cereal blend for the production of direct-expanded snacks from oxidative stability, shelf-life, and protein quality perspectives during his PhD study. His working areas are mainly focused on pulse processing, product development, and nutritional quality. His work contributed to informed decision-making on the nutritional content of foods and product development insights. Esayas Bekele was a postdoctoral fellow in the College of Pharmacy and Nutrition at the University of Saskatchewan. He awarded scholarships from Pluses of Pulses project funded by Global Affairs Canada and IDRC, and Living Skies Post Doctoral program at the University of Saskatchewan.

Kunzekweguta Machiweyi, PhD (University of Saskatchewan) The Role of Agricultural Co-operatives in Enhancing Food Security in East Africa: A Review

Machiweyi Kunzekweguta is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Saskatchewan, working at the Canadian Centre for the Study of Co-operatives and the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy. He is part of the research team working on an international project entitled Enhancing Food Security and Livelihoods Especially of Women and Girls in Sub-Saharan Africa. His current research explores how agricultural cooperatives benefit smallholder farmers—with special attention on issues around food security and empowerment of women—while examining the role of social norms. Machiweyi has a strong background in developmental work. Over the past decade, his work focused on food security, evaluating the adoption of agricultural technologies, assessing the impact of agricultural programs implemented among smallholder farmers in Africa, and mapping agricultural value chains. Machiweyi holds a PhD in Applied Economics from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada; a Masters in Agribusiness and International Rural Development from Lincoln University, New Zealand; and a degree in Economics from Midlands State University, Zimbabwe.

Dionne Pohler, PhD (Co-operative Retailing System Chair in Co-operative Governance, Edwards School of Business, University of Saskatchewan) 

Dionne Pohler is an associate professor and head of the University of Saskatchewan Edwards School of Business Department of Human Resources and Organizational Behaviour, and the Co-operative Retailing System Chair in Co-operative Governance at the Canadian Centre for the Study of Co-operatives in the Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy. Her research covers topics in co-operative and credit union governance and strategy, rural studies, labour and employment, and public policy. Dionne was one of the co-investigators on the Co-operative Innovation Project, which led to the creation of Co-operatives First, a rural and Indigenous co-operative business development and community-building organization. Dionne holds a PhD in Human Resources and Industrial Relations from the University of Alberta School of Business, a Bachelor of Commerce from Dalhousie University, and a Chartered Professional in Human Resources designation from CPHR Saskatchewan. 

Nikita Eriksen-Hamel (Deputy Director of Food Systems Practices, Global Affairs Canada)  

Dr. Nikita Eriksen-Hamel is Deputy Director of Food Systems Practice in the Food Systems and Nutrition Division of Global Affairs Canada. He leads a team of policy analysts and technical specialists who provide strategic, policy and technical advice to the Department’s agriculture and food systems programs and leads Canada’s engagement in many multilateral and global policy fora. In this role he has contributed to defining the strategic direction of Canada’s agriculture and food systems portfolio for the past 16years, including providing technical support to over 500 agri-food projects. He has had extensive field experience having worked and supported projects in over 30 countries, including being responsible for opening up Canada’s diplomatic mission in Cotonou, Benin. He has a background in environmental engineering, ecological agriculture and soil science from the University of Waterloo, Wageningen University and McGill University.

Karl Rich, PhD (Director, Master of International Agriculture Program, Oklahoma State University) 

Dr. Karl M. Rich is Director of International Agricultural Programs for the Ferguson College of Agriculture, Director of the Master of International Agriculture Program, and a Professor of Agricultural Economics at Oklahoma State University. While trained as an agricultural economist, Dr. Rich’s research has cut across disciplinary boundaries, integrating agricultural and livestock policy analysis, global agribusiness issues, animal and aquatic health, and research methods development. He has successfully worked with veterinarians, epidemiologists, animal scientists, and crop experts on a variety of applied research topics around the world, providing contextual guidance on socio-economic drivers of behavior and uptake and empirical evidence of benefits and tradeoffs across economic, social, and environmental dimensions. Most recently, he has pioneered the use of specialized participatory tools to develop decision-support models with stakeholders to help them co-conceptualize problems and co-create solutions. These tools have been applied in the context of urban agriculture planning in New Zealand; socio-economic drivers of animal disease in Zambia, Timor-Leste, Thailand, Vietnam, and Senegal; nutritionally-sensitive marketing channels for horticulture in South Asia; livestock value chain development in Nicaragua, Myanmar, and Ghana; and climate-smart agriculture in Senegal.

Dr. Rich joined OSU in July 2021 after 16 years of working overseas. Dr. Rich has traveled to 90 countries, with applied research and/or teaching experience in over 30 of these countries and long-term residence in nine. He was previously Team Leader at the International Livestock Research Institute’s (ILRI) West Africa Regional Office in Dakar, Senegal. At ILRI, Dr. Rich led a multidisciplinary team conducting applied research that informed livestock sector strategy and investment options in the developing world. He led a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation project to develop improved tools for livestock sector planning, as well as an impact assessment of the 2019 African Swine Fever outbreak in Vietnam. He was also part of a multidisciplinary team that advised the Government of Uruguay on whether to stop vaccination against foot-and-mouth disease in 2019. Previous to his work at ILRI, Dr. Rich worked in the Master of International Rural Development program at Lincoln University in New Zealand; the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs in Oslo; the Department of Economics at the American University of Cairo; the South Asia Office of the International Food Policy Research Institute in New Delhi, India; and the U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington, D.C. He also has served as an advisor to the CGIAR Covid-19 Hub; a World Health Organization panel on neglected tropical diseases; and the Scottish Government’s Centre for Excellence on Animal Health (EPIC). In the past ten years, he has raised over $20 million in external grants in collaboration with multidisciplinary research teams. He has over 80 peer-reviewed articles in a variety of high-impact journals that span the areas of agricultural economics, agribusiness, systems modeling, veterinary science, and environmental management.

Dr. Rich holds graduate degrees (M.S. and Ph.D.) in agricultural economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a bachelors (A.B.) degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Jean Claude Rubyogo (Director, Pan Africa Bean Research Alliance, Biodiversity International and CIAT Hub)

Dominic Schofield - Moderator