Abegaz was Exec. Dir. of African Acad. of Sciences (2011-2017). He has contributed to the development of the Acad. by securing recognition by the African Union and NEPAD and steep increase of the fellows. Under his leadership and partnerships with global funders, AESA, the alliance for accelerating excellence in science in Africa has been established. He's been promoting South-South cooperation and is the co-founder of highly successful networks: Natural Product Research Network for Eastern and Central Africa (NAPRECA), Network for Analytical and Bioassay Services in Africa (NABSA), and pan-African Natural Products Library (p-ANPL). Abegaz served as Chair of UNESCO Science Board, the CSPR of ICSU, as sen. Advisor to IOCD, IFS, etc. He has also received a number of awards, the IFS-DANIDA award, the Pierre Crabbe Award and the CNR Rao Award. He is elected fellow of TWAS, AAS and EAS.

Mammo is professor of chemistry at Addis Ababa Univ., Ethiopia. He was educated at AAU and the Univ. of Bonn, Germany. He was chairman of the Dept. of Chemistry, AAU, (1997-99), editor and editor-in-chief of the Bull. Chem. Soc. Ethiop. (1993-96) and visiting professor at Chalmers Univ. of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden (1996-2013). His major contributions are in the synthesis of a wide variety of polythiophenes and polyfluorene copolymers destined mainly for photovoltaic applications. Through support from ISP, Sweden, he established one of the best modern synthetic chemistry facilities in Africa at AAU, which gives strong support to materials research and training. He is the recipient of the 2012 CNR Rao Prize for scientific research. His research interests include natural products chemistry and the synthesis and characterization of conjugated polymers for photovoltaic applications.

Jean-Pierre EZIN is Emeritus Professor of mathematics of Université d'Abomey-Calavi. He held doctorat d'Etat in Geometric Analysis at Université Lille I, France. He has been Professor at Université Nationale, Bénin since 1982 ; senior lecturer at Université Lille I (1973-1982). He has been researcher at Abdus Salam ICTP,Trieste, Italy (1986-1988).He also was Commissioner of Economic Community of West African States for Education,Science and Culture from 2014-2016 and Commissioner of African Union for Human Resource,Science and Technology from 2008-2013. He is Founding Director of Institut de Mathématiques et de Sciences Physiques, Bénin from1988-2008. In between he was Recteur Université Nationale, Bénin (1990-1992).As other implications, he was member of Board of Council Office of International Science and Engineering (OISE) of NSF, USA, and of Board of Council International Science Programme (ISP), Sweden from 2010-2013 and from 2011-2015 Chairperson of Agence Inter-établissement de Recherche pour le Développement (AIRD),France. He is initiator and founding member of Bénin Academy of Science. In 2014 he was honored by TWAS special Award " for building science capacity in Africa".

Ermias Dagne is Prof. of Chemistry and Dir., African Laboratory for Natural Products (ALNAP). He is founding member, Natural Products Research Network for Eastern and Central Africa (NAPRECA). His main research area is natural products chemistry. He has more than 90 publications, mainly on the isolation and structure elucidation of natural compounds. His research was supported by grants from the Internatl. Foundation for Science, ISP-IPICS and Sida-SAREC (Sweden) and fellowships from the Humboldt Foundation (AvH, Germany) and Fulbright (USA). He is recipient of IFS/DANIDA (1997) and IOCD Pierre Crabbe (2003) awards. With his wife Tadelech he manages a natural products business Ariti Herbal (www.aritiherbal.com) and has created a versatile plant species-based database for African plants available on the web at www.alnapnetwork.com.