Martha S.E. Williams-Ngegba (PhD)

Dr. Martha has over 12 years’ experience in Food and Nutrition Research for Development at the Sierra Leone Agricultural Research Institute (SLARI). She is currently the Officer In-Charge of Magbosie Land and Water Agricultural Research Centre, one of the constituent Centres of SLARI. She is also the Head of the Post-harvest Engineering, Food and Nutrition Sciences thematic area: where she trained nutrition instructors, processors, farmers, teachers and extension officers on value addition, food diversity, nutrition and health. She has a wealth of knowledge in food product development, food and nutrition analyses, food safety and quality control. She is passionate about reducing hunger and malnutrition thereby enhancing the nutritional status of the population especially resource poor farmers, women and children through research for development.

Dr. Martha’s current research are focused on dietary assessment, food quality and safety, processing and value addition and utilization of local/indigenous foods, climate change and clean cooking, healthy diet consumption. She is also an Associate Lecturer in the Institute of Food Technology, Nutrition and Consumer Studies, School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, Njala University, Sierra Leone.

She is the country Lead for the Generation of Databases for Food Consumption and Micronutrient Survey and also for the Acceleration of Soybean Value Chain for improved Income, Nutrition, Health in Sierra Leone under the promotion of innovations and Technologies by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) Food Systems Resilience Program (FSRP) in the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (MAFS) . Prior to now, she coordinated a grant on Soil and Water Management Practices for improving Sustainable Agricultural Productivity and Food Security in Moyamba District” funded by he Global Environment Facility (GEF) Small Grant Programme through UNOPS grant to MLWERC/SLARI. She also lead the National Advocacy Effort on Resource Mobilization towards the conducting the first Joint Sierra Leone Food Consumption and Micronutrient Survey. 

Dr. Martha is playing key roles towards the transformation of sustainable agrifood systems initiative in Sierra Leone.  She facilitated  Food Security, Nutrition and Health Thematic area of the FAO/EU Sustainable Food Systems Initiatives coordinated by the Office of the Honorable, Vice President as a National Facilitator. She is currently collaborating with Agrinatura under the Sustainable Agrifood Systems Intelligence (SASI) Science – Policy Interface (SPI); A collaborative Initiative between the European Union, FAO, AGRINATURA, Governments, and Agrifood system actors to work on work stream 3 of the initiative: Ensure that the Food Salone Strategy contribute to healthy diet consumption in Sierra Leone. She also provided technical advice on WFP Nutrition specific and sensitive programs in Sierra Leone Country Office as a Nutrition Consultant. Specifically, she worked on targeted supplementary feeding for addressing moderate acute malnutrition in children and pregnant and lactating women during the COVID-19 pandemic, Home-Grown School Feeding (HGSF) school menu development, nutrition sensitive agriculture training to Farmer Based Organizations and promotion of the production and consumption of local complementary foods by children 6-24 months among others.

She has experienced in supporting nutrition-related national processes and policies, through her coordinating role of the Academia and Research Network of Scale Up Nutrition (SUN) movement at country specific level.

She has worked in diverse International academic and research establishments like International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) as post-graduate fellow, Virgin Tech and Cornell University at the United States Department of Agriculture Research Services (USDA_ARs), Ithaca New York as Norman Borlaug LEAP Fellow, where she conducted nutrients and bioavailability research on consumed local food in Sierra Leone. She is also a member of the Post Harvest Taskforce of AfricaRice.

She has showcased her research works in series of conferences and publications in peer-review journals, book chapters, book of abstracts and technical reports.