Robert Zougmoré

Dr Robert Zougmoré is a citizen of Burkina Faso. 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 by training an agronomist and soil scientist with a PhD in Production Ecology & Resources Conservation from the University of Wageningen, The Netherlands. His areas of expertise include Agronomy and soil science, Land degradation and development, Climate change adaptation & mitigation, Integrated Water and Nutrient Management, Agroecology, Climate-smart policies and institutions.

As the Africa Program Leader for CCAFS, he is defining and overseeing strategic directions for CCAFS research in the region and therefore, coordinating actions that lead to coherent implementation of the regional activities from the participating CGIAR Centres and other regional and national partners. One of his major tasks is to Communicating regional research outputs and strategy through innovative means in order to project a highly professional image for CCAFS and the CGIAR. Under his leadership, CCAFS action research was conducted at all levels, from the climate-smart villages to district and national level science-policy platforms, and to the regional climate-smart agriculture (CSA) alliances, in a way to generate scientific information that inform top-down and bottom-up decision-making processes on climate change, agriculture and food security. By doing so, Robert achieved outstanding development outcomes such as: (1) the widespread dissemination of climate information services to 7.4 million people in Senegal, (2) the mainstreaming of CCAFS climate-smart village approach to promote climate-smart agricultural technologies and practices within 60 communes in Niger, (3) the use of CCAFS science to inform the developement of major national and regional agricultural policies (e.g. Development of a national CSA action plan for Ghana, development of a rural sector plan for Burkina Faso, development of a CSA implementation framework and of a CSA alliance for ECOWAS).

Robert is also teaching as part-time Lecturer at Cape Coast, Niamey and Bobo-Dioulasso Universities, Agrhymet, and the Katibougou Polytechnic Institute in Mali. He has also been the Secretary General of the Africa Soil Science Society. Robert has published widely with more than 50 papers and book chapters on soil erosion, integrated soil, water and nutrient management options and their economic benefits, and climate-smart agriculture. Google Scholar, Research Gate.