16 March 2009

Dr. Stephan Weise will replace Richard Markham as the Director of Bioversity’s Commodities for Livelihoods Programme.

A Canadian/Swiss national, with a PhD in Agricultural Sciences from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Weise is currently the regional manager of the Sustainable Tree Crops Programme (STCP) at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Ghana. STCP is a public-private partnership and innovation platform that seeks to increase, in an environmentally and socially responsible manner, the income of West and Central African farmers growing cocoa, coffee and cashew nuts.

Prior to his engagement with STCP, Weise held various responsibilities within IITA devoted to research on the tropical forest margins. He was also the regional coordinator for West and Central Africa and the leader of the working group on Agronomic/Landscape Sustainability in a related CGIAR systemwide programme. He joined IITA in 1993 as a vegetation management specialist and was appointed the leader of the Humid Forest Programme in Cameroon soon after.

Weise will start his new position at Bioversity's Montpellier office in June. As the Commodities for Livelihoods Programme Director, he hopes to continue developing commodity-based innovation system approaches, promoting the emergence of a culture of innovation at the local level, encouraging the sharing of knowledge, information and technologies across stakeholders, and integrating the generation of income with sustainable natural resource management practices.