Senior Scientist
Dr Birhanu Zemadim Birhanu is a Research Cluster Leader for Landscapes, Soil Fertility and Water Management under the Global Program Resilient Farm and Food Systems, ICRISAT, based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. Dr Birhanu is specialized in Land and Water Resources Management with over 12 years’ professional and project management experience in Eastern and Western Africa. A former Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Dr Birhanu has been a project manager for multiple donor-funded projects over the years.
He was part of the development, implementation and evaluation of multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional donor-funded projects and scientific works related to hydrology, food security, agricultural land and water management technologies in Ethiopia, Tanzania, Mali and Niger. A few of the global projects managed by Dr Birhanu over the past years include (i) USAID-funded ‘Feed the Future’ project in Mali (AfricaRISING), (ii) USAID-funded ‘Global Climate Change’ program in the Sahel, (iii) DFID-funded ‘Climate Change Project’ in Mali, (iv) Care-Mali International-funded ‘Food for Peace’ program in the Sahel, (v) BIOVISION Foundation-funded project on Enabling a Resilient and Prosperous Community Through Participatory Watershed Management Practices in the Semiarid region of Central Tanzania, and (vi) The CGIAR Research Program on Water, Land and Ecosystem in Mali, Ethiopia and Tanzania.
He is a recipient of multiple awards for his scientific contributions, project management and resource mobilization work. Some of them include ICRISAT’s 2014 and 2018 Outstanding Partnership Award, and the Best Scientific Paper Award for two consecutive years 2017 and 2018. He is a Water Resources Management Specialist certified by the Ethiopian Ministry of Water, Irrigation and Energy, and has authored and co-authored multiple publications in scientific journals, proceedings, blogs and media outlets.
Areas of expertise: Agricultural Land and Water Management, Hydrology, Participatory Watershed Management, Field-to-Landscape Scale Technology Evaluation and Scaling, Numerical Modelling & Capacity Building.