Dr. Abdou Tenkouano is the Executive Director of CORAF, the West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development, based in Dakar, Senegal
His academic background is in plant breeding and genetics, with a Ph.D. (1993) obtained at Texas A&M University. His research interests encompass the use of conventional plant breeding and biotechnology to develop new and improved varieties; the structure and expansion of associated seed systems; and the use of participatory community immersion approaches linking research and practice to facilitate uptake of innovations at scale. He has carried out his professional activities across sub-Saharan Africa and has worked on several crop species including sorghum, millet, maize, cassava, yam, banana and plantain, and a range of vegetables.
At the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) in Mali Dr. Tenkouano worked as a sorghum breeder and as coordinator of the West and Central Africa Sorghum Research Network from 1994 to 1996. During this period he studied the phenological plasticity of sorghum as a mechanism for coping with uncertainty of rains at the onset of the growing seasons. He also examined options for going beyond field-level production of sorghum with a view to improving grain storage and processing.
He then joined the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA, www.iita.org) and worked there until 2008, successively in Nigeria, Cameroon and Ghana, as a plant breeder for cassava, banana and plantain, and yam. At IITA, he led the banana and plantain program and served as member of the Research for Development Council. He and his team initiated one of the first banana transformation programs to look at transcriptional silencing as a method for preventing the expression of banana streak badnavirus (an integrated ds DNA that is present in all existing bananas and becomes active and pathogenic under certain conditions). This work has been in many ways the precursor to the banana transformation program later carried out in Uganda by a joint team of IITA and the National Research Organization (NARO) under the stewardship of the Kenya-based African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF). Through this program, banana transformed with genes from sweet pepper that confer resistance to bacterial wilt are now in confined field testing. His work on cassava led to the release of three varieties in Cameroon.
He joined AVRDC – The World Vegetable Center (WorldVeg) where he served as Deputy Chair of the Institutional Research and Development Committee and member of the Institutional Management Committee. He has been responsible for leading the center’s operations initially across sub-Saharan Africa (based in Tanzania) and subsequently in West and Central Africa (based in Mali). He has been an advocate of dietary diversification with vegetables to improve the nutritional status of vulnerable populations across sub-Saharan Africa while tackling issues related to insufficiently productive crop varieties, health hazards associated with the use of polluted water for vegetable production, and perishability of harvested produce. This entailed the design of best practices hubs that combine testing and demonstration of research products with education of youth and women within local value chains.
Dr. Tenkouano has been keenly interested in harnessing the potential of the private sector in supporting agricultural transformation in Africa. In this regard, he has been an advisor of the Special Interest Group on Vegetables of the African Seed Trade Association (AFSTA). He departed AVRDC in April 2016.