Beatrice Desiree Simo-Kengne is Associate professor and senior researcher for the Public and Environmental Economics Research Centre (PEERC) in the School of Economics at the
University of Johannesburg, South Africa. She holds BCom degree in Economic Mathematics and Econometrics and MCom degree in Monetary and Banking Economics from the University
of Douala, Cameroon; MCom degree in Financial Economics from the University of Johannesburg, South Africa; MPhil and PhD degrees in Economics from the University of
Pretoria, South Africa. She has taught Macroeconomics, Panel Econometrics, Time Series Econometrics and Mathematics for Economists.  She has facilitated a number of Econometrics
workshop trainings and has supervised many MCom and PhD students. She has a tremendous publication experience in the field of development Economics covering the areas of housing,
stock, health, energy, agriculture, growth, environment, performance evaluation, risk management, monetary policy and import/export. In her academic citizenship, Beatrice serves
on the “Economics and Management Sciences standing Panel” of the South African National Research Foundation. In addition, she acts as reviewer in many international journals
including-but not limited to- African Development Review, Economic Modelling, South African Journal of Economics, Habitat International, Energy Economics, Emerging Market
Finance and Trade, Quality and Quantity, City and Empirical Economics.
 

Jude Kimengsi who holds a PhD in Resources and Development Geography (2011) is an Associate Professor in Resource and Conservation Geography at the University of Bamenda and the Catholic University of Cameroon (CATUC). From 2017 to 2020, he was an Excellence Initiative Research and Teaching Fellow at the Technische Universität Dresden (Germany). Between 2012 and 2015, he was Consultant on Sustainable Development and Coordinator of Research, Consultancy and Publications Division at the Pan African Institute for Development – West Africa (PAID-WA). Prof Kimengsi has over 65 publications on linked issues of natural resource management. His current research seeks to apply mixed-methods approaches to unbundle the (dis)connections between institutions, livelihoods and natural resource management. Prof Kimengsi has been Visiting Scholar in several European Universities, including TU-Munich and Universität Witten/Herdecke. He held the position of Director of Research (2019-2020) and Head of Department of Geography and Environmental Studies (2014-2017) at CATUC. Prof. Kimengsi is a recipient of the prestigious German Research Foundation (DFG) Grant. He is a consultant with WWF Cameroon and Germany on conservation, livelihoods and development.

He is a reviewer for several journals, including the Journal of Sustainable Development in Africa, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, Sustainability, Forest Policy and Economics, Forests, Climate Change, and Social Sciences. Prof. Kimengsi is a DAAD/DIES Regional Expert on grant writing where he has intervened in several African countries including Namibia, Senegal, Ethiopia, Tanzania and the DRC. He is a Young Fellow of the Cameroon Academy of Sciences and Board Member of the Global Environmental Non-Migration Network.

Tonjock Rosemary Kinge is an Associate Professor of Mycology in the Department of Biological Sciences, Faculty of Science in the University of Bamenda, Cameroon. She has a PhD in Botany (Mycology) from the University of Buea in 2013. Her research is focused on four main axes; fungi diversity, fungi pathology, ethnomycology and conservation. She has identified and ascertained mushroom diversity in different forests in the South and North West Regions of Cameroon using morphological and molecular methods. Several species of mushrooms have been identified some of which are new to science and new records for Cameroon.  She has carried out morphological, cultural and molecular identification of Fusarium and Ganoderma species infecting oil palm in Cameroon which have aided in the control of vascular wilt and basal stem rot diseases.  Also, research has being carried out on mycobiome analysis of underutilized crops using next generation sequencing. Ethnomycological knowledge on mushrooms has been documented and result is been used for bioprospecting by phytochemists. Mushroom conservation has been done with the communities through cultivation of overharvested species (Pleurotus ostreatus) with locally available substrates and by the planting of fast growing leguminous trees. Rosemary is a member of several scientific organizations including the Cameroon Academy of Young Scientists. She is a fellow of the African Science Leadership Programme, a TWAS-CAS and Fulbright scholar alumni. She has published over 25 articles in international peer-reviewed journals. She is a reviewer for South African Journal of Botany, Academic Journals, Science Domain and Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine.

Benard W. Kulohoma is an African scientist with a wide range of research interests that include: capacity building, bioinformatics, genomics, population genetics, infectious diseases (invasive pneumococcal disease and animal African trypanosomiasis), and non-communicable diseases (type II diabetes). His primary research goals are directed towards development and use of analysis pipelines, and tools to explore large-scale data, especially in resource poor-settings. He is currently based at the University of Nairobi's Centre for Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, where he is a Senior Lecturer in Bioinformatics; and continues to contribute to scientific research efforts in large genomics and bioinformatics consortia (H3Africa, EANBIT, THRIVE, UKBioBank) across the globe and supervise postgraduate students. Benard received his Ph.D. in Genomics from the University of Liverpool (2012), Masters degree in Bioinformatics from the University of Manchester (2010), and his Bachelors degree (First class honours) in Biochemistry from the University of Nairobi (2006). He has vast experience in genomics, bioinformatics and big data analytics; has received several international awards for his scientific contributions; and has published pertinent research journal papers and book chapters in his field.