Yodit Kebede

Yodit Kebede has undertaken research in agroecology, natural pest control and soil and water management. She works from the field to landscape scale and at both the scientific and policy level. As an independent agroecology consultant, she has provided services for a variety of organisations, including ECOWAS, Biovision Foundation and UN-FAO.

Prior to joining Cultivate!, Yodit worked as a post-doctoral researcher for IRD (the French national Research Institute for Development), researching the scientific and political perceptions of agroecology, particularly in the African context. She also worked for the FAO agroecology unit in Rome, where she was part of the team involved in the elaboration of FAO’s 10 elements of agroecology, TAPE (Tool for Agroecology Performance Evaluation) as well as the organisation of the FAO second symposium on agroecology.

Yodit Kebede holds a Ph.D in landscape ecology and an MSc in Soil and Water Conservation from Wageningen University, The Netherlands and an MSc in agricultural engineering from VetAgroSup, France. In her Ph.D research, Yodit analysed the socio-ecological processes that have shaped the landscapes in the region of Hawassa (Ethiopia) to understand some of the ecosystem services that agriculture is providing, particularly pest control.

She has broad life and work experience in several African and European countries including Ethiopia (9 years), Madagascar (6 years) and Guinea (2 years), and West African countries (Mali, Burkina-Faso, Ivory Coast, Senegal: short term stays), France (10 years), Belgium (3 years), The Netherlands (10 years).

Yodit is a native speaker of Amharic and French and is also fluent in English and Spanish. She speaks a basic Dutch, Italian and Portuguese. In her free time, Yodit enjoys reading a book, playing her guitar or going for a run.

Contact: yodit@cultivatecollective.org