Eusebius Mukhwana
Dr. Eusebius J. Mukhwana is a Kenyan who holds a PhD in Soil Sciences from the University of Wyoming in the USA. He also hold a Bachelor’s degree in Veterinary Medicine (1993) and MSc in Pharmacology and Toxicology (1995) both from the University of Nairobi, Kenya. He is an accomplished administrator, researcher and Team leader in the Education, Agriculture, and Rural Development sector for over 20 years. He has vast experience in performance based Management, strategy and policy development both locally and internationally. He is currently serving as the Deputy Commission Secretary/Deputy CEO in charge of Planning, Research and Development at the Commission for University Education (CUE), Kenya. In this he spearheads the development of national policies and strategies for improving the impact of University Education for national Development. He is also responsible for developing policies and strategies for integrating education systems within the east Africa community in order to achieve free movement of labor and services within the region for faster economic and social development. For about 4 years, he worked as a Senior Lecturer and Dean School of Agriculture at Embu University College (A constituent college of the University of Nairobi). Previously he had worked for 15 years as the Director/CEO of the Sustainable Agriculture Center for Research and Development in Africa (SACRED Africa). While working with the last two institutions, he had opportunity to work closely with more than 50,000 farmers, designing farm productivity improvements projects in the areas of soil fertility, improved seed technologies, collective marketing and farm management. He has worked internationally as a consultant for the World Bank, RUFORUM (an inter university research support program), FAO, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and ASARECA, in the areas of university education, agricultural productivity and marketing, and impact of government policies on university education and smallholder farmers in east Africa. Over the last 15 years he has published more that 20 papers and contributed chapters in six books in the area of policy and strategy development, soil health, community development, collective marketing, rural development, sustainability of smallholder production systems and the impacts of research on rural livelihoods and especially smallholder farmers. Because of the enormous impacts of his work, in 2005 he was awarded a Head of state commendation (by His Excellency Hon Mwai Kibaki, the president of Kenya)-HSC. And in 2009; he was awarded the Norman Borlaug Award for Leadership in Agriculture for his contribution in improving food security in Africa.