Expertise & Professional Background

Dr. Francis Opiyo is a highly accomplished Kenyan academic, researcher, and humanitarian expert currently serving as a Regional Programme Policy Specialist for Emergency Preparedness and Response at the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in Eastern Africa. Holding a Ph.D. in Climate Change Adaptation alongside an M.Sc. and B.Sc. in Rangeland Management from the University of Nairobi, he possesses over a decade of specialized experience in driving food security, climate resilience, and disaster risk reduction initiatives across the Horn of Africa.

Throughout his career, which includes impactful roles with organizations like the FAO, UNDP, and the International Rescue Committee, Dr. Opiyo has focused his research and field implementation on improving pastoral livelihoods, managing climate-induced resource conflicts, and building community-level vulnerability coping mechanisms in arid and semi-arid lands.

Expertise & Professional Background

With over 30 years of professional experience, Pheodor is a specialist in food safety, environmental sustainability, and resource efficiency. He provides technical advisory to global healthcare and hospitality leaders on energy conservation and sustainable waste management, ensuring industrial processes align with global environmental protection standards and corporate sustainability goals.

His extensive technical background spans industrial hygiene applications, water conservation methodologies, and chemical safety protocols across East Africa's commercial and manufacturing sectors.

Expertise & Professional Background

Chrispinus Juma is an expert in strategic communications, public relations, and media strategy with extensive experience in the international development sector across Africa. As Communications Manager at DT Global, he leads regional outreach efforts, multi-channel advocacy campaigns, and stakeholder communications designed to maximize project visibility and impact.

His professional expertise spans corporate messaging, digital content strategy, crisis communication management, and donor reporting across complex multi-country development programs.

Expertise & Professional Background

Dr. David Ojwang is an accomplished agricultural development expert serving as the Country Director for Farm Africa in Tanzania. With a strong academic background and extensive leadership in international NGOs, he oversees strategic agricultural initiatives, value chain development, and rural enterprise programs aimed at lifting rural communities out of poverty.

His core competencies include natural resource governance, organizational leadership, multi-stakeholder donor relations, and scaling climate-resilient agricultural technologies across East African markets.

Expertise & Professional Background

George Ochuodho serves as Country Programme Manager at Farm Africa, bringing extensive expertise in project management, strategic planning, and program execution. He specializes in driving organizational efficiency, ensuring rigorous quality assurance, and providing governance leadership across complex agricultural and rural development portfolios.

His professional competencies include operational oversight, monitoring and evaluation frameworks, strategic policy alignment, and fostering multi-sector partnerships for sustainable economic development.

Expertise & Professional Background

Dr. Fridah Karimi Kirera is an accomplished financial leader serving as Finance Director and Grants Portfolio Manager at Heva Fund. She possesses deep expertise in financial governance, grant administration, venture financing, and portfolio management, driving sustainable economic growth and investment strategies across creative and development sectors.

Her professional experience includes corporate finance structuring, risk management frameworks, audit compliance, and impact investing advisory across East African regional markets.

Expertise & Professional Background

Teddy Nyanapa is a dedicated programmes manager at Farm Africa with extensive expertise in community-led development, agricultural extension programs, and field-level project implementation. She focuses on empowering smallholder farmers and building resilient local agricultural systems.

Her professional focus includes stakeholder mobilization, capacity building, community-based natural resource management, and implementing inclusive livelihood interventions across rural regions.

Expertise & Professional Background

Martin Kathurima is a leading consultant at Finacoop and founder of Sidai Farms. With extensive expertise in cooperative systems, agricultural enterprise development, and rural financing, he works closely with producer organizations and agribusiness ventures to enhance operational efficiency, market access, and commercial viability.

His professional practice encompasses cooperative governance training, agricultural value chain financing, enterprise management, and promoting sustainable commercial farming models across East Africa.

Expertise and Strategic Impact

Vincent Orwa Alila is a distinguished architect of market-led transformation with over 20 years of experience bridging global donor objectives with localized economic impact. He possesses a sophisticated command of top management leadership, strategic synthesis, governance and quality assurance for complex development portfolios.

Vincent provides end-to-end solutions spanning strategic research, expert advisory, programme coordination, implementation and rigorous impact assessment. He is a specialist in value chain analysis and strategic upgrading, conducting in-depth market assessments to identify leverage points and enhance competitiveness in line with international standards.

He is particularly adept at market access and strategic linkages, facilitating critical connections between smallholders and private-sector actors to strengthen resilient market systems. Through entrepreneurship, business development services and stakeholder engagement, he delivers tailored approaches that promote institutional growth, enterprise competitiveness and financial sustainability.

Vincent's governance expertise extends to donor proposal development, concept notes and strategy, supporting organizations and partnerships to develop strong technical bids, unlock funding and scale impactful programmes. He champions gender inclusion and financial access, applying inclusive approaches to improve smallholder productivity and participation in market systems.

Research and Strategic Publications

Professional Profile

Millicent is a Food Science & Technology professional with over five years of multidisciplinary experience at the intersection of food systems, sustainable development, food safety, environmental sustainability and business development. Her experience spans development and private-sector settings, giving her a practical understanding of how technical expertise, research, partnerships and commercially viable solutions can be brought together to address complex development and sustainability challenges.

Her more recent work in food hygiene, safety and institutional operations has expanded this foundation through engagement with Ecolab, a global leader in water, food safety and hygiene technologies and solutions. Her work involves technical engagement, hygiene programming, solution development, implementation and client training across food, healthcare, hospitality and institutional environments. This has strengthened her expertise in food safety, operational efficiency, resource optimisation and corporate sustainability, while developing her ability to translate technical requirements into practical solutions that deliver both operational and commercial value. Her experience has also contributed to increased adoption of technical solutions and strengthened market growth across multiple sectors.

Her experience in food systems and sustainable development has included work across food and nutrition security, agricultural value chains, climate-smart agriculture, resilient livelihoods and sustainable agricultural development. She has contributed to multisectoral initiatives such as the Earth Observation and Environmental Sensing for Sustainable Agriculture (ESSA) project, with experience spanning research, planning, implementation, data collection, monitoring and reporting. Her work has also included supporting alternative livelihood opportunities for pastoral and agropastoral populations in East Africa and small-scale horticultural initiatives, strengthening her understanding of how evidence, innovation and strategic interventions can contribute to resilient and sustainable food systems.

Her broader interest in environmental sustainability is grounded in climate resilience, resource efficiency, circular economy approaches and sustainable food systems. Through both development and corporate engagements, she has worked at the intersection of resource efficiency, low-carbon operations, sustainability performance and organisational resilience, with a particular interest in connecting research and evidence to practical solutions that generate lasting environmental, social and economic value.

Millicent brings a combination of technical expertise, project leadership, research and analytical capability, stakeholder engagement and business development experience. She is comfortable operating across private-sector and development environments, engaging diverse stakeholders, translating complex needs into actionable programmes and solutions, and driving initiatives from concept through implementation. Her approach is evidence-informed, collaborative and commercially aware, with a strong commitment to sustainable and inclusive growth and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

Expertise and Food Systems Leadership

Samwel Ochieng Onyango is an accomplished professional in food systems management and leadership, bringing over a decade of deep technical experience to the global development sector. He leads technical interventions designed to transform food systems from production to consumption, ensuring value chains contribute to inclusive growth and nutrition security.

Samwel provides end-to-end technical solutions, utilizing scientific research, evidence and expert advisory to strengthen regional food security. His work connects food systems research with practical interventions that improve productivity, sustainability and resilience across agricultural value chains.

He is a specialist in sustainable agricultural practices, promoting Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) and Climate-Smart Agricultural Technologies to drive environmental sustainability. His scientific rigor is applied to value chain analysis and strategic upgrading, identifying opportunities to enhance the productivity and competitiveness of essential food systems.

Samwel also facilitates market access and strategic linkages, supporting the integration of smallholders into high-value private-sector networks. Through entrepreneurship, business development services and stakeholder engagement, he contributes to sustainable agribusiness models while integrating gender inclusion, nutrition security and financial access into technical designs.

Research, Publications and Impact

Expertise and Strategic Impact

Jeff is a seasoned development communications strategist specializing in knowledge management, digital advocacy and impact storytelling within the international NGO and agribusiness sectors. He translates complex technical data, value chain assessments and climate-smart agricultural research into compelling public-facing narratives, policy briefs and digital campaigns.

His expertise spans stakeholder mapping, media relations and brand positioning across Sub-Saharan Africa. Jeff designs and executes strategic communication frameworks that amplify programme outcomes, bridge the gap between research institutions and smallholder communities, and secure high-level visibility for sustainable development initiatives among donors, investors and policymakers.

Expertise and Strategic Impact

Beth is an accomplished Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) expert with extensive experience designing robust results frameworks, digital data collection architectures and impact-tracking systems for multi-million-dollar development portfolios. She specializes in quantitative and qualitative data analysis, midline and endline evaluations, and real-time learning loops that inform adaptive management.

Her technical focus includes establishing key performance indicators (KPIs) for nutritional security, climate-smart agriculture and smallholder integration. Beth ensures that programmes generate verifiable evidence, maintain rigorous data integrity and systematically translate field insights into actionable strategies for continuous project improvement.

Expertise and Strategic Impact

Fiona brings extensive expertise in operational governance, resource mobilization and administrative compliance within complex institutional frameworks. With a rigorous background in development logistics, she oversees institutional workflows, grants administration and financial tracking for multi-partner initiatives. Her work centers on optimizing organizational efficiency, ensuring rigorous compliance with donor regulations such as USAID, SDC and EU frameworks, and managing procurement processes that align with strict accountability standards.

She is particularly skilled in resource allocation modeling, inventory control systems and cross-departmental coordination, ensuring that field teams and technical leads have the operational backing required to execute large-scale agricultural and food security programmes seamlessly.

Expertise and Strategic Impact

Davis is a rigorous technical specialist with deep expertise in market systems development, agricultural engineering and infrastructure deployment for food security and circular economy projects. He leads the technical conceptualization and field execution of agro-processing interventions, cold-chain logistics and waste-to-value systems.

His professional focus encompasses site assessments, technical auditing and the integration of automated commercial equipment to enhance post-harvest handling and institutional sanitation. Davis works closely with private-sector distributors and local stakeholders to ensure that technical solutions are durable, cost-effective and fully compliant with HACCP and international food safety standards.

Professional Profile

Nancy supports research and knowledge activities focused on agribusiness, agricultural value chains and market systems. Her work contributes to the collection, organisation and interpretation of evidence that informs programme development, implementation and learning.

She supports research and analysis on agribusiness development, agricultural markets, enterprise performance and value chain dynamics, contributing to practical knowledge products and evidence that can strengthen market participation and business opportunities within the agricultural sector.

Nancy brings a strong interest in agribusiness, agricultural development, research and knowledge generation. She supports multidisciplinary teams in translating research and evidence into practical insights that contribute to stronger agricultural enterprises, more effective value chains and inclusive market development.

Professional Profile

Laventer supports businesses, entrepreneurs and value chain actors through practical business development services focused on nutrition. Her work helps strengthen enterprise capacity, improve business practices and support the development of viable businesses that contribute to improved nutrition outcomes.

Her role connects business development support with practical nutrition priorities, including enterprise planning, market-oriented approaches, product and service development, stakeholder engagement and strengthening the capacity of businesses operating within nutrition-related value chains.

Laventer contributes to approaches that promote inclusive enterprise development, stronger market opportunities and improved access to relevant business knowledge and support services, with a focus on businesses and value chain actors contributing to healthier and more nutritious food systems.

Professional Profile

Vallery supports agricultural enterprises, entrepreneurs and value chain actors through practical business development services focused on climate-smart agriculture. Her work helps strengthen enterprise capacity, improve business practices and support the adoption of approaches that enhance productivity, resilience and sustainability.

Her role connects business development support with climate-smart agricultural priorities, including enterprise planning, market-oriented development, climate-resilient business practices, stakeholder engagement and strengthening the capacity of businesses to respond to changing environmental and market conditions.

Vallery contributes to approaches that promote resilient agricultural enterprises, stronger market linkages and inclusive business opportunities while supporting the integration of climate-smart practices into enterprise development and agricultural value chains.