Dr Namukolo Covic is Regional Director, East and Southern Africa (ESA), CGIAR, ILRI Director General’s Representative to Ethiopia, and CGIAR Country Convenor for Ethiopia. She has over 20 years’ experience on different aspects of food security and nutrition including research, program implementation and leadership development. Most recently, she was on the leadership teams of two United Nations Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) 2021 action tracks, and is a founding member of the Coalition of Action on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems for Children and All. She co-leads the Governance Working Group of an Independent Expert Group that emerged from the UNFSS that has developed a Monitoring Framework on Food Systems Transformation to guide progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) countdown to 2030. Before joining ILRI, she was a senior research at IFPRI and has worked on projects in several countries, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Zambia. She is recognized for her ability to work at the interface of research, policy, and program processes and has worked extensively with the government of Ethiopia and other African national and regional stakeholders on different fronts of food systems and nutrition.