Dr. Sanginga Nteranya
President of African Agriculture Leadership Institute (AALI), Director General Emeritus IITA, and former Director General at the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA). Dr. Sanginga has more than 30 years of agricultural research and development management in Africa, 16 years (1989-2003,) at IITA from postdoc to Head of the Savanna Program and 7 years (2003-2010) at CIAT-TSBF, and 12 years at IITA (2011 to 2023). I am the first African Director General of IITA created in 1967 and Head Quarter based in Ibadan Nigeria but having stations in 18 Countries in Sub-Sahara Africa. Since assuming office in 2011 he transformed IITA into a strong strategic center and partner for research-for-development in sub-Saharan Africa with a triple-digit budget (from S47m in 2011 to $ 160m in 2022).
- Under my leadership, transformed IITA from a pan-African research organization into a truly international R4D organization with a tropical but very African focus. He, for the first time decentralized IITA in building and renovating new infrastructures from the scratch in Dar es Salam in Tanzania, Lusaka in Zambia, Kalambo-Bukavu DR Congo, Abuja, Kano, Onne and Imo in Nigeria, Nampula in Mozambique, Accra and Tamale in Ghana, Namulonge in Uganda and Cotonou in Benin Republic.
- For its groundbreaking work, IITA received the 2018 Africa Food Prize and the Al-Sumait Prize for Food Security in 2016. Dr Sanginga was conferred the degree of Doctor of Honoris Causa by the Academic Council of KU Leuven, Belgium on the 15 May 2019. The award was conferred on the 20th anniversary of VLIR-UOS, an organization that supports partnerships between higher education institutions in Flanders and the South. In 2022, Dr. Sanginga won the Africa Green City Champion Award.
- As TSBF Director, I had been privileged to build this institution with a budget of $1.2 million in 2003 to $14.5 million in 2011 and scaled its research for development activities from only western Kenya to several countries in major agroecosystems of east, central and southern Africa. Our area of great impact had been the Great Lakes Regions (DR Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi).