Ralph Roothaert
Principal Investigator – Veggies 4 Planet & People (V4P&P) Project and Country Director – Kenya
Eastern and Southern Africa
PhD in Agriculture, Wageningen University, Netherlands
Seed systems, private sector partnerships, collective action, gender
Ralph Roothaert (The Netherlands) aims to understand how best vegetable production can result in diverse and healthy diets to combat malnutrition for vulnerable groups. Ralph has worked in Africa for 21 years and in Southeast Asia for 3 years. He started as a development worker with the Voluntary Service Overseas in Nigeria, then worked as an agricultural scientist with the CGIAR for 13 years (ICRAF in Kenya, CIAT in the Philippines, and ILRI in Ethiopia). After that, he became Fund Manager of the Maendeleo Agricultural Technology Fund of Farm Africa in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, where he managed many different consortia of partner organizations, each of them focusing on the development of a particular agricultural value chain. He then joined Oxfam GB in Tanzania, where he coordinated the Economic Justice Programme, facilitating partnerships in the agricultural sector using gender market mapping approaches. Prior to joining WorldVeg he was the Associate Country Director for Oxfam GB in Tanzania.