On 31 October 2011, Dr Hartmann completed his tenure as the sixth Director General of IITA. In this interview, Hartmann shares his experience on his 10-year stay at IITA.

Agricultural Economist Jim Gockowski of IITA-STCP based in Ghana shares his experiences in working in Africa for Africa.

David Chikoye, IITA Director for R4D who manages the southern African hub and two programs—the Cereals and Legumes, and the Horticulture and Tree Crops Programs, gives an update on the status of the hub in Zambia.

Victor Manyong, IITA’s director for eastern and central Africa, talks about his 17-year experience with the institute as an agricultural economist and his vision for the institute’s socioscience research.

Ousmane Boukar, IITA’s cowpea breeder, has been with IITA since 2007. As a breeder, he mines IITA’s germplasm collection of cowpea to identify important additional sources of gene(s) of interest for resistance to both biotic and abiotic stresses, sources of consumers and producers’ preferred traits, etc. to broaden cowpea’s genetic diversity and contribute efficiently and significantly to cowpea genetic improvement.

Conserving the genetic resources of important African food crops is a huge responsibility, but Dominique Dumet enjoys the challenges and demands at work. See what she plans to do during this International Year of Biodiversity.

Robert Asiedu, IITA’s R4D director for West Africa and program director for agrobiodiversity and root and tuber systems programs, has been with IITA for 20 years now. Discover what inspires him at work.

The “father of biocontrol”, Peter Neuenschwander, joined IITA’s biocontrol project against the cassava mealybug in 1983, and retired in 2003. In this interview, he bares his mind on the contribution of biocontrol and strategies on how Africa can check invasive pests.

Rachid Hanna is an entomologist who joined IITA-Bénin in 1998 to lead the cassava green mite (CGM) biological control program. He recently relocated to IITA-Cameroon and has been entrusted in helping to rebuild the research program with a new focus.

Developing countries lose billions of dollars in trade annually to aflatoxin contamination in foods. Worst still, the contamination endangers the health of millions of people in the region. But the good news is that IITA has developed a biocontrol product (aflasafe) to tackle this problem. Ranajit Bandyophadhay relates the journey that led to the development of aflasafe.