Dr Robert B. Zougmore is currently the Regional Program Leader Program Management Committee, Research program on Climate change Agriculture and food security (CCAFS).

Before joining CCAFS, he was a senior staff within the Environment Program of the Sahara & Sahel Observatory (Tunisia) where he was actively involved in the development and implementation of initiatives pertaining: (1) to Desertification, land Degradation and Drought (DLDD) including environmental surveillance, monitoring and evaluation of DLDD, drought early warning, in the framework of the UNCCD implementation; (2) to climate change adaptation in Africa - the aim being to contribute defining informed policies for good environmental governance in Africa. He coordinated a joint-funded IDRC/DFID project entitled "Experimenting a capacity development approach and a toolkit for monitoring and evaluation within climate change adaptation initiatives", in collaboration with UNECA, AGRHYMET and IUCN.

Prior to that, he spent one year as a Post-Doc at the Japan International Research Center for Agricultural Science (JIRCAS) in Japan, working on the benefit of conservation agriculture for soil and water conservation.From 1990 to 2007, he was senior researcher and has been Chief department of the Natural resources Management and farming systems at the Institute for Environment and Agricultural Research in Burkina Faso. Thanks to his great experience in integrated land and water management at plot and watershed scales, he has contributed developing adaptations options and strategies to climate variability and land degradation in the vulnerable arid and semi-arid ecosystems, therefore generating and sharing significant scientific knowledge for informed decision making and sound policy development. He actively contributed to the use of databases for the validation of APSIM and DSSAT models in the Sahel and their use for the dissemination of sustainable land, water and nutrient management technologies.

He has coordinated several research projects at national and regional levels in partnership with regional and international institutions (IFDC, ICRISAT, IITA, CIAT, FAO, IFAD, etc.). He was also a part-time Lecturer at the Polytechnic University of Bobo-Dioulasso on land degradation and sustainable land & water management. He is the Secretary General of the Africa Soil Science Society. Robert Zougmore has published widely on soil erosion, integrated soil, water and nutrient management options and their economic benefits.

Dr Robert B. Zougmorï¿ is an agronomist and soil scientist with a PhD in Production Ecology & Resources Conservation from the University of Wageningen in The Netherlands.