Chagema Kedera, PhD, is a Kenyan with over two decades of experience in agriculture/trade especially in national and international standards (covering plant protection, food safety, biotechnology, plant variety protection and seed certification).

Kedera currently serves as the SPS Advisor for the

USAID – East Africa Trade and Investment Hub and Senior Technical Consultant with the UASID-Kenya Agricultural Value Chain Enterprises on Horticultural Issues. Kedera has served as a Technical Advisor (2014-2016) for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on seed issues and also as a Regional Coordinator (2011-2015) with the EU funded COLEACP-EDES Food Safety Programme. He served as a trainer on food safety governance, financing of food safety, and laboratory business plans in addition to being a facilitator in several technical meetings in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Ghana, Botswana, Mauritius, and Zambia.

Kedera was Deputy Chief of Party (2010-2011) of the USAID-Kenya Horticulture Competitiveness Project in charge of policy, standards, value chain coordination, market linkages and market information systems. Kedera was the founding Managing Director (1997-2010) of the Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service (KEPHIS). He successfully steered KEPHIS to become a public sector agency respected by the public and private sectors in all aspects of its work, including conformance with both national and international regulations and standards in plant health, plant variety protection, seed certification and analytical laboratory testing. Kedera chaired the Kenya National Taskforce (2002-2009) on Horticulture – a forum for public and private sector stakeholders in the industry. He spearheaded Kenya’s active participation in the international standards setting bodies including the IPPC, CODEX, OECD seed schemes, OECD fruits and vegetable schemes, ISTA and UPOV (1998-2010). He was elected Chairperson of both the OECD Annual Seed Schemes meetings and the Commission for Phytosanitary Measures (CPM) 2006-2008.

As research plant pathologist (with plant breeding training) at Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (1989-1997), Kedera was involved in plant disease diagnosis, breeding for disease resistance in maize and evaluation of maize varieties in value for cultivation tutorials.