Professor Cheikh Mbow is the Director of Future Africa at the University of Pretoria. Prof. Mbow served as the Executive Director of START-International in Washington DC and Lead Scientist on Climate Change at the World Agroforestry (ICRAF) in Kenya. He is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Michigan State University’s Department of Forestry. He led several international research programs such as Chapter 5 of the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land (SRCCL) and has been a Lead Author for the Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use (AFOLU) of IPCC-AR5. Prof. Mbow is now a Coordinating Lead Author for the?Climate Change (IPCC)?Special Report on Climate Change and Land and lead author of IPCC AR6 on AFOLU.

He served in many Scientific Committees such as the Global Land Program (2005-2011), the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program-IGBP from 2012-2014, and Future Earth (2013-2015). Prof. Mbow worked on drivers of land resource dynamics in various human-ecological contexts. He focused on climate impacts and land-based mitigation pathways, food security, and land resource opportunities in semi-arid ecosystems. He is currently working on the development of transdisciplinary approaches to address Africa’s development challenges by establishing frameworks for thriving sustainability science to support need transformation in the continent.