Staff Profiles

• MA (Development Studies), Sussex, England 
• PhD (Agricultural Extension & Rural Sociology), Ife, Nigeria 
• MSc (Agricultural Extension & Rural Sociology), Ife, Nigeria 
• Bachelor of Agriculture (Honours), Ife, Nigeria 
• Ordinary Diploma (General Agriculture)

Oluwatoyin (Toyin) Dare Kolawole is Professor of Rural Development at the Okavango Research Institute (ORI), University of Botswana (UB) in southern Africa. Professor Kolawole is an Adjunct Faculty at Eastern University based in St Davids, Pennsylvania, USA. He is currently the chairperson of the ORI Institutional Review Board. Working at the interface of science, policy and agriculture, he conducts research broadly in development studies with emphasis on community empowerment and agrarian change. He has published well over 150 papers covering diverse development subjects. A UC Visiting Canterbury Fellow in 2014, Dr. Kolawole is a recipient of over 35 academic awards and research/travel grants and has led and managed a number of multi-disciplinary, pro-poor development research funded both locally and internationally. He has attended over 70 regional/international conferences and workshops across all continents. In 2016, the Lesotho’s Council for Higher Education (CHE) appointed him as chairperson of the panel of experts that reviewed the B.Sc. Agricultural Economics Programme of the National University of Lesotho (NUL) and a member of experts that reviewed the B.Sc. Agricultural Extension Programme of the NUL in of 2017. Prof. Kolawole is a verified peer reviewer for several, well recognized scientific journals, and national and multilateral funding agencies. He is a member of the Editorial Board of SAGE Open and International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food.

• Rural Development
• Politics of knowledge/Indigenous knowledge
• Rural entrepreneurship development and employment promotion
• Sustainable agriculture
• Diffusion studies
• Climate variability and change
• Adult literacy
• Environment and Development   

• Climate change and agriculture
• Rural entrepreneurship development and employment promotion 
• Diffusion studies
• Indigenous knowledge and development 
• Adult literacy
• Community development 
• Community based natural resources management
• Poverty, inequality and unemployment
• Rural development
• Water resources management 
• Development studies 

1. Kolawole, O.D. (2023). Reconfiguring rurality, Dialogues in Human Geography. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/20438206231202826
2. Noga, S.R., Kolawole, O.D. et al. (2018). ‘Wildlife officials only care about animals’: Farmers’ perceptions of a Ministry-based extension delivery system in mitigating human-wildlife conflicts in the Okavango Delta, Botswana, Journal of Rural Studies 61. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2018.06.003
3. Kolawole, O. D. et al. (2016). Ethno-meteorology and scientific weather forecasting: small farmers and scientists’ perspectives on climate variability in the Okavango Delta, Botswana, Climate Risk Management 4-5. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.crm.2014.08.002
4. Kolawole, O.D. (2015). Twenty reasons why local knowledge will remain relevant to development, Development in Practice 25(8), pp. 1189-1195. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09614524.2015.1078777
5. Kolawole, O.D. (2013). Soils, science and the politics of knowledge: How African smallholder farmers are framed and situated in the global debates on integrated soil fertility management, Land Use Policy 30(1). pp.470-484. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2012.04.006