Paul Van Mele

   

Paul Van Mele is an agricultural scientist from Ghent University, Belgium. Since 1992, he lectured and worked in various multi-disciplinary research projects in Africa, Asia and South America. His PhD explored Vietnamese fruit farmers' knowledge on pest management (Wageningen University, 2000). He co-authored Ants as Friends (see English pdf version for download below), which is now translated into four languages. He also edited Way out of the Woods and co-edited Innovations in Rural Extension: Case Studies from Bangladesh.

In 2004, his video project on seed health with women in Bangladesh won an international award for effective communication from the International Visual Communication Association in London. Two years later, these farmer training videos had been translated into five languages, reaching millions of farmers in Asia and Africa.

Currently Program Leader on Partnerships, Learning and Innovation Systems at the Africa Rice Center (WARDA), his research interests include local innovations, seed systems, bridging local and scientific knowledge, stimulating negotiation between actors in the value chain, developing farmer-education videos, and scaling-up of participatory research & learning.

Paul is a participatory learning and extension specialist. He has worked extensively throughout South and SE Asia, West Africa, South America and the Mediterranean on projects with FAO, CABI, IPGRI, IRRI and WARDA.

These projects have involved capacity building, assessing knowledge systems, extension through learner-centred video production, facilitating institutional learning and strengthening collaboration between research, extension and end-user communities. His work has involved the extensive development of training curricula and materials.

See sample writings below and in Publications