Robert Mwanga

Robert Mwanga (born 24, May, 1954) is a plant breeder from Uganda. In 2016 he was one of four recipients of the World Food Prize for his work on biofortification of crops, specifically the development of the orange-fleshed sweet potato (OFSP), which is rich in vitamin A.

Early life Mwanga was born in 1954 to Abuneri Mwanga an evangelist in the Seventh-day Adventist Church and Joyce Nsoli, a farmer in Budhabangula village in Uganda.

Education Mwanga went to the Seventh-day Adventist Bugema Primary School until 1968, then attending Jinja College on a Muljibhai Madhavani Company scholarship. He later went to Namilyango College on a government scholarship to study biology, chemistry, geography, fine art and sub-mathematics which he completed in 1974. He obtained a government scholarship to attend Makerere University in Kampala to study botany, zoology, and geography.

Career Graduating from Makerere University with honours in 1978, he joined the National Agricultural Research Laboratory at Kawanda, as a root-crop breeder and also part timing as a Biology teacher at Bugema Secondary School. However, this was a period of civil unrest during the rule of Idi Amin, and the laboratory's facilities had been decimated by funding cuts. Mwanga left Uganda in 1983 to work at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Ibadan, Nigeria.

Achievements More than 40% of pre-school children and 10% of pregnant women in sub-Saharan Africa do not get sufficient vitamin A. A serious deficiency can lead to blindness and increase the likelihood of a child dying from common illnesses, such as diarrhoea and measles. According to Mwanga, an average of 51 children under six die every day in Uganda because of vitamin A deficiency. It would be almost impossible to deliver vitamin A capsules to all families in Africa but making it available through a food staple could address the problem.

By 2014, more than 30 percent of the farmers in Uganda were growing the OFSP varieties that Mwanga had developed. He and other researchers organized groups of farmers to sell cuttings to other small-scale farmers and public education campaigns were used to promote the OFSP, using t-shirts, billboards, and bright orange trucks. Food processors were encouraged to develop foods such as orange sweet potato chips and vacuum-packed sweet potato purée. Over 600,000 botanical sweet potato seeds (breeding populations) have also been distributed to sub-Saharan Africa countries from Mwanga's program.

Personal life Mwanga is married to Rose Makumbi having two sons together.