Wilberforce Kisamba-Mugerwa is the Minister of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries in the Government of Uganda, and a Member of Parliament. He is also a senior research associate with Makerere Institute of Social Research, Makerere University, in Kampala. Kisamba-Mugerwa holds a doctorate in agricultural economics from Makerere University. He has a strong background in research, with particular interests in the management of natural resources, poverty, food security, and rural development in general. He is a member of various research networks, and regional and international associations.

Belay Ejigu is the Vice Minister of Agriculture for the Government of Ethiopia. He is also the coordinator of Ethiopia¹s national extension intervention. Before becoming the Vice Minister in 1999, he was head of the agricultural extension department of the Ministry of Agriculture. Belay Ejigu received his M.Sc. in agricultural extension from the University of Reading, United Kingdom, and his B.Sc. in agricultural economics from Alemaya College, Alemaya, Ethiopia. He is a member of several professional committees and organizations, and chairman of the board of two enterprises.

John Pender, a senior research fellow, joined IFPRI in 1995 after working as an assistant professor of economics at Brigham Young University. His research at IFPRI focuses on the causes and effects of agricultural change in fragile lands, particularly the highlands of East Africa and the hillsides of Central America. He is involved in fieldwork to characterize the regions being studied and in designing and conducting community, household, and plot-level surveys. Pender received a bachelor's degree from the California Institute of Technology, a master of public policy degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from Stanford University. He is a U.S. citizen.

Simeon Ehui, Coordinator of the Livestock Policy Analysis Program at ILRI, has over 15 years of professional international agricultural experience in Africa, and more recently in Asia. He is also the manager of the ILRI/IFPRI project on policies for sustainable land management in the Ethiopian Highlands. Before joining ILRI in 1990 as an agricultural economist, Ehui was a Rockefeller Foundation Research Fellow at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, where he helped develop models of processes associated with sustainability and degradation of farming systems in sub-Saharan Africa. A citizen of Côte d¹Ivoire, Ehui received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in agricultural economics from Purdue University, and his M.Sc. and B.A. in applied economics from the National University of Cote d¹Ivoire. He is the author of many publications and the recipient of several professional awards.

Josué Dioné, director of the sustainable development division, manages the UNECA¹s subprogram on population and social development, agriculture and economic livelihoods, natural resources and the environment, and science and technology. Before joining the UNECA in 2001, he was principal policy economist at the African Development Bank, associate professor of agricultural economics at Michigan State University, and regional program coordinator for policy research and dialogue on agricultural development and food security at the Institute of the Sahel. He has done extensive research work on the interactive effects of policy, institutions, and technology on agricultural development and food security in the Sahel and West Africa. A citizen of Mali, Dioné has a Ph.D. in agricultural economics from Michigan State University.