John Wilson was born and raised in Zimbabwe and lives there today. He is an agroecology stalwart and works to strengthen local civil society at various levels in this field in eastern and southern Africa, and sometimes in West Africa.

Famara Diédhiou is the programme officer for the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA). He is an engineer on regional planning and urban management with specialties in organic agriculture. He is also a member of the ethics committee in the National Organic Agriculture movement (FENAB) of Senegal. Famara has extensive experience working with rural women and their organisations. Before joining AFSA, at FAHAMU he built and supported the growth of “We Are the Solution”, a rural women’s movement in West Africa. He has experience working with small-scale farmers on agroecology, organic agriculture, and the promotion of traditional seed varieties and the domestic and export market. He holds an MBA from CESAG in Dakar.

Ray Patridge is a chartered certified accountant and finance professional with broad experience, ranging from European blue-chip companies to not-for-profit social enterprises in Africa. After developing his career in London, he moved to South Africa to work in a development project, which included taking the role of project director for four years. This followed nearly two decades of a blend of business and development experience, that took him from South Africa to Zimbabwe and northern Mozambique, and back again. Currently based in Cape Town, Ray has been working with a private equity investment group focused on food and food security, with investments in Mauritius.

Having earned a respected record of evidence-based work, under Mariam’s leadership the ACB plays a vital role in the food sovereignty struggles on the African continent, through championing new thinking on seed sovereignty policy and opposing unsustainable and socially unjust food systems, rooted in industrial agriculture, especially genetic engineering of seed and crops. She holds BA LLB and LLM degrees, which she obtained from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.

Mariann is a lawyer and environmental, human and food rights advocate, with a career based on supporting communities to resist and expose industrial corporate-led agriculture and promote food sovereignty and environmental justice. She is the chairperson of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty Africa (AFSA), as well as the programme manager at Environmental Rights Action (ERA) – the Nigerian chapter of Friends of the Earth International (FoEI) – the coordinator of FOE’s Africa’s Food Sovereignty and she is on FoEI’s Steering Committee of the Food Sovereignty Programme. Prior to full time advocacy work she did a stint in the public sector, working at the Nigerian Law Reform Commission, an agency under the Nigerian Ministry of Justice. Her activism started when she was studying and advocated for student rights, eventually being elected as Attorney-General of the Students’ Union Government. During her Service Year, she served as chairperson of Litigation and Prison Decongestion, Legal Aid Community Development, and initiated a women and children detainee programme with Legal Aid Council.

Barbara Ntambirweki is a Ugandan lawyer and researcher, working with the ETC Group under the African Technology Assessment Platform. She is also a Digital Practitioner Fellow at Stanford University US. Barbara is passionate about promoting technology justice within food systems in Africa, particularly with regard to the emerging developments in modern biotechnology and the digitalisation of food and agriculture. Currently, she is coordinating the African Working Group on Digitalization of Food and Agriculture, to raise the collective voice of civil society organisations and movements on the governance of digital agriculture in Africa. Previously, she was a Research Fellow with Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE), involved in research and policy advocacy on the regulation of genetic engineering in Uganda. Barbara is also a lecturer at the Uganda Pentecostal University, where she teaches Intellectual Property Law. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Law (LLB) from Makerere University and obtained a Master’s degree in Law (LLM) from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She has over 13 years of experience in research and policy analysis on food system issues and emerging technologies around genetically modified crops, synthetic biology, and digital agriculture.