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David Onyango
Communications Specialist
CABI, Canary Bird, 673 Limuru Road, Muthaiga, PO Box 633-00621, Nairobi, Kenya
Qualifications
BSc in Agricultural Education and Extension; MSc in Agricultural Information and Communication Management
About
I have worked for CABI since June 2013. Here, I manage development communications projects aimed at helping farmers lose less of their yield to plant health problems as well as raising awareness of the Plantwise programme in Africa. This entails overseeing the planning and implementation of mass extension campaigns using appropriate, locally relevant and gender inclusive communication channels with partners in 12 countries. This contributes to empowering 30 million target farmers with plant health knowledge by 2020. I also coordinate the Africa centres’ corporate communications with support from the global and regional communications teams in conceptualizing and producing news items on CABI Plantwise activities and developments for use on external and CABI news dissemination channels. Furthermore, I manage engagement with existing and potential Plantwise partners including support of regional events, workshops and other face-to-face meetings in Plantwise implementing countries across Africa. I also coordinate the relationship between the Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Agriculture (RUFORUM) and CABI. This is through building capacity to enhance access and usage of CABI’s agricultural research information, with an overall goal of strengthening tertiary agricultural education.
CABI centre: Kenya
CABI has a regional centre for Africa in Nairobi. Agriculture is essential for sub-Saharan Africa’s economic growth and yet average crop yields in Africa are among the lowest in the world. Over 80% rely on it but many face challenges in growing sufficient good quality produce.
Related projects
Establishing a digital plant health service in Malawi
Pests and diseases contribute to 40% of food loss leading to food insecurity. Synthetic pesticides are the predominant control method but these are associated with negative environmental and health concerns. The extensive use of chemicals has sparked a renewed interest in Integrated Pest Management (IPM) – an effective combination of control methods and the need for new innovative ways to manage pest and disease outbreaks. There are many digital systems that have been developed to identify, monitor, manage, control and predict outbreaks of a large number of pest and disease species. These systems provide useful information to aid decision-making and timing of integrated pest management strategies. By building on the successes of existing systems and data assets, this project aims to establish a digital agricultural plant health service for efficient pest and disease management in Malawi that will benefit over 100,000 farmers.
Start: 01/06/22 -End: 30/06/27