Director of Operations
Robert Abaidoo obtained his PhD (Agronomy and Soil Science) from the University of Hawaii, Honolulu, USA. He is a leading expert in crop productivity including peri-urban vegetable production systems. He has experience in international collaboration and partnered several institutions in designing and implementing funded research projects usually as the country lead for Ghana and working with stakeholders from the various ministries and local government areas.
He has been involved in the research supervision of over 30 PhD students drawn from KNUST, Ghana, Amadu Bello University, Nigeria, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, University of Ghent, Belgium, University of Hanover, Germany, and the University of Wageningen, Holland. His research focuses on addressing issues in symbiotic soil microbial-plant processes for enhanced cropping system productivity; and safeguarding public health concerns on peri-urban vegetable production using wastewater, poultry manure, and other municipal wastes and has performed several reviews of manuscripts in these subject areas; resulting in over 270 research communications.
Robert is currently the Director, Office of Grants and Research, KNUST. Prior to this, he served as Dean of the School of Graduate Studies, KNUST, the Provost of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, KNUST, and Visiting Collaborative Scientist and Soil Microbiologist at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan, Nigeria.
He has built extensive project and grant management experience from managing several internally coordinated projects including roles as; (i) Project Manager of the KNUST sub-grant of the SARI-Led Enhancing Soil Health in Northern Ghana: Inoculants Production, Distribution and Utilization through Private-Public Partnership; (ii) Steering Committee Chairmanship of the KNUST-DANIDA BSU/ECP & GEP Project: Building Stronger Universities (BSU) and Project Leader of Research capacity development of KNUST Staff project (BSU II and III) supported by DANIDA; (iii) Assistant Project Manager for the Improved MSc. in Cultivar Development Program for Africa as a feather in the cap of KNUST-AGRA relationship; (iv) Provision project management support to Agribusiness value chain analysis in root and tuber crops funded by DANIDA; (v) Co-Investigator Urban Food Plus, GlobeE African German Partnership to enhance resource use efficiency in urban and peri-urban agriculture for improved food security in West Africa countries; (vi) Country Leader and manager of the KNUST sub-grant of Institutionalization of quality assurance mechanism and dissemination of top quality commercial products, the purpose of which is to increase crop yields and improve food security of smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa-COMPRO II; (vii) Leader, AGRA-KNUST Soil Science PhD study program for West Africa at KNUST.
