Alex Awiti

Alex O. Awiti is a Principal Scientist at CIFOR-ICRAF. He is also an adjunct Professor in the Department of Planning, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of the Fraser Valley in BC, Canada. He was Vice Provost and Professor at Aga Khan University. He also served as Dean of the Graduate School of Media and Communication and Founding Director of the East Africa Institute of Aga Khan University. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Earth Institute at Columbia University in the City of New York. He was also an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. Awiti began his research, academic, and policy career at ICRAF in Nairobi. He and his colleagues pioneered novel approaches for rapidly diagnosing soil, vegetation, and land health using Near Infrared Spectroscopy. Awiti is a trans-disciplinary systems scholar whose research intersects agriculture, food systems, ecology, biogeochemistry, education, and policy political economy. As a public intellectual, he has written over 800 opinion articles in leading Kenyan newspapers and international publications, including the International Policy Digest and The Conversation.

He holds a PhD in Ecosystem Ecology from the University of Nairobi.