Dr. Adiel Mbabu

Dr. Adiel N. Mbabu is currently serving as a development consultant with CAPDEV Consultants Limited. He previously served as the Regional Director for the International Potato Center (CIP) in sub-Saharan Africa. In this position, he provided programmatic oversight for research and development portfolio; provided leadership in regional operational systems; and played a representational role for CIP in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

Dr. Mbabu previously served as Manager for Reaching Agents of Change (RAC), a project co-hosted by CIP and Helen Keller International (HKI). The RAC project advocated for supportive policies and new investments by governments, donors and NGOs to scale-up adoption of Orange-Fleshed Sweetpotato (OFSP) in selected countries. RAC also built capacity of implementing agencies to design and implement technically strong and cost-effective interventions to drive OFSP uptake. Countries of focus included Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, and to a lesser extent Ghana and Burkina Faso.

Before joining CIP, he served as Senior Adviser – Agriculture Development (AusAID) and as Technical Director, Agricultural Research and Development Support Facility in Papua New Guinea (PNG). As Technical Director, Dr. Mbabu was engaged in supporting selected national agricultural research organizations to develop and implement results-based strategic plans, translating these plans into impact-oriented programs and projects and to build human and organizational capacity to deliver on the emerging portfolio. Under his role as Senior Adviser-Agriculture Development, he provided advice to AusAID, PNG Post and PNG government on potential areas of investment to meet national development objectives.

Dr. Mbabu also served as Senior Research Fellow for Organization and Management of Agricultural Research Program with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), ISNAR Division; Technical Officer, Program Planning at the Association for Strengthening Agricultural Research in East and Central Africa (ASARECA); as Planning, Management and Evaluation Adviser/interim Assistant Director – Socio-economics & Biometrics division, Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI); as Research Fellow at the International Service for National Agricultural Research (ISNAR); and as Resident Scientist for the Small Ruminant Collaborative Research Support Programme (SR-CRSP), sociology project (Kenya site), on behalf of the University of Missouri-Columbia, in collaboration with the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute.