Namukolo Covic

Namukolo Covic (Zambia) is ILRI Director General’s Representative to Ethiopia. From 2015 to 2021 she served as Senior Research Coordinator at IFPRI, for the CGIAR Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) and worked on projects in several countries, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Zambia. A multidisciplinary academic background that spans crop science and extension (BSC), animal and poultry science (PGD) and nutrition (MSc & PhD) has made her uniquely positioned to addresses dynamics of food systems transformation from different fronts. She is recognized for her ability to link diverse stakeholders on interlinkages of research, policy and program processes. She has worked extensively with the government of Ethiopia and other stakeholders including the Ethiopian Public Health Institute, the Ministry of Health, and the Ministry of Agriculture, and development agencies on different fronts of food systems and nutrition, including the development of food based dietary guidelines and their adaptation to pastoralist settings in Ethiopia; and the development of Ethiopia’s food systems transformation pathway in response to Ethiopia’s development needs and the United Nations Food Systems Summit process. She has supported African Union efforts on linking agriculture and nutrition in the CAADP process. She leads the Governance Working Group of an Independent Expert Group that emerged from the UNFSS that has developed a Monitoring Framework on Food Systems Transformation to guide progress on the SDG countdown to 2030.