Malick Niango Ba

Regional Director – West and Central Africa

Dr. Malick Niango Ba (Burkina Faso) is the Regional Director for West and Central Africa at the World Vegetable Center, based in Cotonou, Benin. He joined WorldVeg in August 2022. Prior to this, Dr. Ba worked at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) from 2013 to 2022 and at the Burkina Faso National Agricultural and Environmental Research Institute (INERA) from 2002 to 2012. He has held various visiting and scholarship positions at several US universities, including the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Purdue University, and Michigan State University. He has over 20 years of research experience on insect pests of legumes, cereals, and vegetables in West Africa.

Additionally, he has held managerial roles for 16 years, first as the head of INERA’s research program on legume grains, then serving as the ICRISAT Niger country representative and Deputy Regional Director for West and Central Africa. Dr. Ba is a member of the Entomological Society of America, the International Association for the Plant Protection Sciences, the African Association of Insect Scientists, and the International Organization of Biological Control. To date, he has published more than 70 papers in peer-reviewed journals and co-authored a dozen book chapters and manuals.