Prof. Sheunesu. Mpepereki
Prof. Sheunesu. Mpepereki a full Professor of Soil Science, currently holds the Professorial Chair in the Department of Soil Science and Agricultural Engineering at the University of Zimbabwe. His qualifications include a Science Teachers Diploma (1972), a first Class B.Sc. in Chemistry and Botany from Fourah Bay College, University of Sierra Leone (1981), an MSc in Soil Science and Microbiology from North Carolina State University, USA (1988), and a Ph.D. in Soil Science from University of Zimbabwe (1994). Within 7 years of acquiring a doctorate in 1994, Prof Mpepereki rose through the ranks from lecturer to full professor by 2002, on the back of extensive scientific publications from his prolific research outputs in leading refereed journals.
He won several competitive research grants allowing his to engage and train numerous Masters and doctorate graduate students many of whom now hold key posts in academia, public and private sectors in Zimbabwe and the sub-region. Working closely with both private and public sector organizations his Soybean Research and Development Program saw both small scale and large scale resettled farmers benefiting from adoption of soybean through improved nutrition and farm incomes. Prof Mpepereki’s research programs featured collaboration with African and overseas partners and included soil fertility niches, legume biological nitrogen fixation (BNF), fate of Bt toxins in tropical soils, smallholder manure management, cyanobacteria and ecological biochemistry of pro-anthocyanidins.
Prof Mpepereki has held many positions of responsibility both within and outside the university including as a department board chair, deputy Dean and Chairman of the UZ Research Board. He has been a member and chairperson of several public sector boards including the Environmental Management Agency (EMA), Agricultural Research Council of Zimbabwe, the Central Mechanical Equipment Department, (CMED Pvt Ltd), and Grain Marketing Board (GMB).
As National Coordinator of the Soyabean Promotion Task Force Professor Sheunesu Mpepereki is credited with successfully integrating and popularizing soyabean as a food, soil improving and cash crop and Rhizobium Inoculant Technology as a cheap soil fertility intervention among Zimbabwe’s black farmers through a sustained dedicated program of applied research, stakeholder mobilization and farmer training. By working with and through value chain actors in both private and public sectors, Prof Mpepereki pioneered the innovation platform approach to conducting Integrated Agricultural Research for Development (IR4D).
Prof Mpepereki has received several distinguished achievement awards that include the Agricultural Sciences Career Fellowship (1995) and the Food security Career Fellowship 2002 from the Rockefeller Foundation and the Presidential Certificate of Distinction Award from the President of Zimbabwe in 2013. Prof Mpepereki has been Recognition as one of Africa’s top scientists came through winning the prestigious Impact Research & Science in Africa (IMPRESSA) Award (2010) sponsored by the AU, NEPAD, AGRA, FARA and Regional Universities Forum for Capacity Building in Africa (RUFORUM). Outside academics, Prof Mpepereki is a practicing commercial farmer and an ardent Pan-Africanist concerned with science, language and culture in the development of African economies.
