Programme Committee | Externwebben

Meet the members of the programme committee

The Agri4D conference aims to bridge science, policy and practice to create a real-world impact on global food systems to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goal 2, Zero Hunger.

The programme committee, responsible for the content, consists of thirteen members from different backgrounds. Please read about all of them below.

Aileen Kendi

Title: Principle Legal Counsel

Affiliation: Veterinary Medicine and Law

Aileen Kendi's genesis is in Veterinary Medicine, especially in companion animals. Later she diversified into Law practice and did a major in Research, Policy formulation, and Legislative Drafting.

"There is a deep disconnect between Livestock Health and Law Practice, I seek to bridge this gap."

Assem Abuhatab, Professor

Assem Abu Hatab is an applied economist with broad empirical interests and focus on the economics and sustainable management of food systems in Africa and the Middle East. Based in Sweden, Abu Hatab is a professor and senior Development Economist at the Nordic Africa Institute, and at the Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. In 2022, he was appointed a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida).

Between 2018 and 2022, he was a lead author of Chapter 7 of the 6th IPCC Assessment Report, and currently acts as a coordinating lead author for the Special Report on climate-water-energy-food-ecosystems nexus of the Mediterranean Experts on Climate and Environmental Change (MedECC). Assem has coordinated, consulted and participated in several international projects.

Boby Ogwang, Founder and CEO

Boby Ogwang is an agriculturist, with specialisation in extension and rural innovations, and experience in team and organisational leadership; entrepreneurship and innovation; and sustainable business management. I founded Good Hope Nursery and Primary School in his home district (Apac, Northern Uganda) in 2014 to provide better education for children in his rural community; co-founded Marula Creative Consultancy and Marula Proteen in 2018; and founded MARA Agribusiness in 2020.

"I'm passionate about social entrepreneurship, sustainable agricultural (coffee) value chain for rural and urban job creation, and ag-tech as an enabler of transparent agricultural market systems."

Bridget Bwalya, Dr.

Dr. Bridget Bwalya is a Senior lecturer in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Zambia. Her research interests include food systems, smallholder agriculture, climate smart agriculture, land resources governance, gender and development, and politics of international agricultural development aid. She is currently a Fellow of the Food Systems Network(FSNET)-Africa.

Prior to that, she was lead in Land rights formalisation expert at the World Bank study on Integrated land scape. Dr. Bwalya experience covers providing high-level technical support and guidance on climate change and agriculture policies, including land tenure, displacement, land status and indigenous people, with a focus on social impact assessment and social capital.

Dr. Bwalya received a Msc in Management of Natural Resources and sustainable agriculture from Norwegian University of Life Science (2007). She holds a PhD in Environment and development studies.

Photo credit: Mattias Sköld, NAI

Celina Butali

Celina Butali is the Regional Gender, Children and Youth Advisor at Vi Agroforestry/Vi-Skogen based at the Regional Office for East Africa in Kenya. Celina has over 17 years’ experience working on gender equality and natural resource management programs and projects. She holds a Master of Arts in Development Studies from the Catholic University of Eastern Africa and Bachelor of Arts in Project Planning and Managenment from The University of Nairobi.

Chisanga T Mwamba, Dr.

Dr. Chisanga T Mwamba is a Technical Consultant supporting the Government of the Republic of Zambia in the development of the second generation National Agricultural Investment Plan (NAIP II) proposed to be Zambia’s Comprehensive Agricultural Transformation Support Program (CATSP).

Engaged on behalf of government by FAO, she previously worked as the National Coordinator for the Agriculture Public Private Partnership (Agri-PPP) platform and managed the agricultural diversification portfolio for the SIDA supported Musika Development Initiatives Limited.

Her career began as a Veterinary Representative of a private input supply company and later moved on to become Veterinary Officer in the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock before moving to serve as Fisheries and Livestock coordinator. She holds an MSc in Animal/Human/Ecosystem Health from the University of Pretoria.

Ivar Virgin, Dr.

Senior Researcher at the Stockholm Environment Institute, SEI

Ivar holds PhD in biochemistry and has worked extensively on issues around sustainable use of global bioresources and how developing countries can access modern biosciences. A focus of his work has been on resource efficient, climate smart and sustainable agricultural production and value chains in Africa. He is an author in and editor of the SEI-Routledge book project Creating Sustainable Bioeconomies: The Bioscience Revolution in Europe and Africa (2017).He is also engaged in the Sida supported Agriculture for Food Security (AgriFoSe2030) translating science into policy and practice programme and he is also part of the Swedish International Agriculture Network Initiative (SIANI).

Jamila Haider, Dr.

Dr. Jamila Haider is a Researcher at Stockholm Resilience Centre, where she co-leads the Resilience and Sustainable Development Research Theme. She studies the relationships between cultural and biological diversity through the lens of food. Jamila’s core research interests are 1) farming practices in mountain areas, 2) where she continuously aims to challenge the frontiers of social-ecological systems and resilience theories, 3) while reflexively engaging in what it means to do rigorous and impactful sustainability science in a caring way.

Jamila enjoys teaching and writing about undisciplinary research journeys, practicing onto-epistemological agility and how to enact transformational leadership with care. Jamila has worked as a development practitioner in Central Asia and Afghanistan.

Johanna Bergman Lodin, Dr.

Dr. Johanna Bergman Lodin is a researcher at the Department of Urban and Rural Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. She holds a doctoral degree in Social and Economic Geography (2012), with specialisations in development geography and feminist geography.

Johanna’s research interests include studying agricultural intensification and commercialisation trajectories in Sub-Saharan Africa from a gender perspective, particularly the interface of new agricultural technology, gender-and-generational relations and smallholder wellbeing. Together with a colleague, she is leading the Gender Equality and Social Inclusion work in the EU Horizon 2020 project SteamBioAfrica.

She is also conducting research in Tanzania in the interdisciplinary C-Co-Cow project. Johanna is the vice dean for gender equality and equal opportunities at the Faculty of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences at SLU. She also teaches and supervises students from undergraduate level to PhD candidates.

Mats Åberg

Mats Åberg has been a Senior Policy Specialist at the Swedish Agency for the International Development (SIDA), since 2006, and has had responsibility for different cooperations on Agriculture and Food security, with UN bodies (IFAD, FAO and others) NGOs and academia.

Prior to this position he worked as a Deputy-Director at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2002-2006), where he was responsible for agriculture, forestry and fishery; food security and food aid; and for the cooperation with WFP, FAO and the EU in these areas. Before that role he was a the Deputy-Director of the Swedish Ministry of Agriculture (1995-2002), in charge of negotiating the Rural development programme and acting as the Swedish delegate in EU committees.

He holds a MSc in Agriculture of the Swedish University of Agriculture.

Mattias Jonsson, Assoc. Prof.

Mattias Jonsson is an applied insect ecologist with broad interests in sustainable agriculture, biodiversity conservation and multifunctionality. His primarily research focus is on the links between biodiversity and ecosystem functions and in approaches to improve sustainable pest control. Mattias conducts research and supervises students in Sweden, Europe and in several countries in East Africa. His teaching focuses on general ecology and crop protection. He has an assignment at SLU Centre of Biological Control and leads the Biodiversity and Biocontrol lab.