Sileshi Gudeta Weldesemayat

Professor Sileshi Gudeta Weldesemayat is an Ethiopian national with over 25 years of experience in agricultural research and development in Africa. He holds a BSc degree in Biology, MSc degree in Agriculture and PhD degree in Ecology. He is currently an Adjunct Professor at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, and Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences. Since 2017 he served as the Deputy Coordinator of Design, Performance and Evaluation of Experiments in the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO). He is senior Editor of CBI Agriculture and Bioscience journal, and the Section Editor of the Agroecology section of that journal. Formerly, he was a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Forest Ecology and Management. He also worked as a Lecturer at the Alemaya University of Agriculture in Ethiopia (1987-1997), Research Associate at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) in Kenya (2000-2001), a Senior Scientist at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) based in Zambia (2002-2006) and Malawi (2006-2011), as the regional representative of ICRAF for the southern Africa region (2011-2014), where he managed the Malawi Agroforestry Food Security Programme and developed a vibrant multi-stakeholder AR4D program called Building a Large Evergreen Agriculture Network for Southern Africa implemented in Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique, Botswana and South Africa. He was nominated as AAS Fellow in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the development of Fertilizer Trees and his exemplary leadership in promoting green technologies to counter land degradation, climate change impacts and improving productivity and food security in Africa. He has authored over 250 peer-reviewed papers in journals and book chapters. He has also coedited two books entitled Indigenous Fruit Trees in the Tropics in 2008 and Agroforestry for Sustainable Intensification of Agriculture in Asia and Africa in 2022, and co-authored two books entitled Termite Management in Agroforestry in 2016 and Bamboo: Climate change adaptation and mitigation in 2020.