Professor Shimelis Hussein is a plant breeder and Director of the African Center for Crop Improvement (ACCI) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), South Africa. He has over 30 years of teaching and research experience in Africa. He has developed several crop varieties and trained more than 100 African agricultural scientists (63 PhDs and 38 MScs). He is a top researcher at UKZN, and his work spans 20 African countries and has earned him one of Africa’s 20 most influential plant breeders (2020). He is a fellow of the African Academy of Sciences, Academy of Science of South Africa, an Associate Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences and a leading voice in demand-led breeding across the continent.
