Nathalie Ewane Nonga

Research Assistant

International Institute for Tropical Agriculture

Nathalie Ewane Nonga is a cocoa specialist and agroecologist. She is working as a research assistant in IITA and she brings to CocoaSoils 12 years of working experience in the cocoa systems and cocoa value chain in Cameroon.
From 2007-2012, she studied Cocoa intensification, integrated cocoa system and agroforestry, participative approach, biodiversity species assessment and carbon stock with many projects (ASB- REALU, Cocoa Eco, Secured Landscape and STCP). Since 2012, she has been leading the capacity building component where Farmer Field Schools (FFS) approach is one of the main activities in the cocoa systems to disseminate information from the research ground to the farmers based on innovations with GIZ (ProCISA). As the lead in training, monitoring and evaluation, she contributed to studies on Next generation cocoa farmers, introduction of youth and women in cocoa with SNV (Cocoa Eco Project). She also led the seed systems component called Sustainable Integrated Centre of Plant Multiplication where she made sure that good and improved planting material (Cocoa and associated plant to cocoa in a cocoa system) is available for smallholders at any level and time. Due to her commitment to see the effective PPP, she has recently contributed to a paper published by International Journal of Biodiversity Science, Ecosystem Services & Management on: “Unpacking ‘sustainable’ cocoa: do sustainability standards, development projects and policies address producer concerns in Indonesia, Cameroon and Peru?” and many other results capitalisation tools as case studies, posters, booklets, documentary films, in French and English languages which can be useful in CocoaSoils.
Before joining IITA, she worked as a consultant in various projects in the Dja Reserve and GIZ-Comifac on REDD+ Strategies and Forest Conservation with communities based on participative approach.
She is a holder of an MSc degree with thesis in Agroforestry Sciences and Forest Ecology from University of Yaounde 1 in Cameroon.