Mary Abukutsa-Onyango: Professor of Horticulture

Prof Mary Abukutsa-Onyango
(Photo: AWARD News and Views blog)

The mention of research on African indigenous vegetables immediately calls to mind the work of an indefatigable Kenyan woman professor, Prof Mary Abukutsa-Onyango, who is well known in Kenya for her long-standing research on conservation of African indigenous vegetables and food crops.

Prof Abukutsa-Onyango is a full professor of horticulture at the Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (JKUAT) specialized in agronomy and plant physiology and with over 20 years of university teaching and research.

She holds a PhD in Horticultural Physiology and Nutrition from the University of London (1995) and an MSc in Agronomy from the University of Nairobi (1988). She was previously an Associate Professor at Maseno University in western Kenya.

She is widely published with some 100 peer-reviewed publications to her name. She has also received several national and international awards in recognition of her research work, the more recent of which include the presidential award of Elder of the Order of the Burning Spear and the top prize in the African Union Regional Woman Scientist in Earth and Life Sciences, both of which were awarded in 2010.

In addition to her work on African indigenous vegetables, Prof Abukutsa-Onyango is involved in conservation of medicinal plants and research on New Rice for Africa (NERICA), a rice cultivar that was developed by the Africa Rice Center to improve the yield of African rice varieties.

An astute leader, she has held five senior leadership positions within the university system including Director of the School of Graduate Studies at Maseno University and Coordinator of the Resource Mobilization team at JKUAT. She is also actively involved in developing university curricula, serves as an external examiner for universities and acts as a reviewer for several high profile scientific journals.

Linked to her teaching and research career, Prof Abukutsa-Onyango is playing an active role in nurturing the next generation of African women scientists by serving as a mentor with the African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD).

AWARD is a project of the Gender & Diversity program of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) that offers two-year fellowships designed to fast-track the careers of African women scientists and professionals delivering pro-poor research and development that benefits rural communities, especially women. AWARD is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Source: http://ke.linkedin.com/pub/mary-abukutsa-o-o-ph-d-ebs/19/b44/40

Agnes Mwang'ombe - Principal of UoN's Agriculture College

Of the University of Nairobi's six colleges, only two are presently headed by Kenyan women professors. One of these women is Prof Agnes Mwang'ombe, the Principal of the College of Agriculture and Veterinary Sciences at Upper Kabete Campus.

The other is Prof Lucy Irungu, the principal of Chiromo Campus, who is featured in my next post.

Prof Mwang'ombe was appointed the principal of Upper Kabete Campus in September 2005, prior to which she was the university's Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture for two years.

Prof Mwang'ombe's area of specialization is plant pathology and she obtained her PhD in plant pathology from the University of London in 1987. A year later, she joined the teaching staff at the University of Nairobi as a lecturer in the Department of Crop Science. She rose through the academic ranks to become a senior lecturer in 1991 and associate professor in 1997.

In 1997, she was appointed a member of the board of the African Crop Science Society and served as the president of the society between 2003 and 2005.

Aside from the area of crop science, Prof Mwang'ombe has been actively engaged in the formulation and implementation of agricultural policy in Kenya. In recognition of her work in this regard, she was appointed the chair of the board of the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis in 2007, a position she currently holds.

She is also involved in charity education programs for girls and mentorship programs for young women scientists in East Africa. In 1996, she was elected the first chair of KEPAWAE - the Kenya Professional Association of Women in Agriculture and Environment. Through this organization, professional women in the fields of agriculture and environmental sciences offer technical expertise and material support to Kenyan rural women farmers through transfer of appropriate farming technologies and development of project proposals.

In 2000, Prof Mwang'ombe founded an NGO - Arid and Semi-arid Lands Foundation - to identify and promote projects aimed at sustainable food production and natural resource management in Kenya's arid and semi-arid lands that comprise over 70 per cent of the country's area. She presently serves as the NGO's director.