Prof Aldo Stroebel is Director International Academic Projects in the Office of the Vice-Chancellor and Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, Rural Development and Extension, University of the Free State (UFS). He is a well-known agriculture- and rural development specialist, focusing on smallholder farming systems in Africa, acknowledged by his recent election as one of 20 Founding Members of the South African Young Academy of Science (SAYAS), under auspices of the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf).

He studied at the University of Pretoria, where he obtained his BSc- and Hons-degrees. This was followed with a Masters degree in International Agricultural Development at the University of Ghent, Belgium in 2000 and a PhD in Sustainable Agriculture in 2004 at UFS. As part of his PhD-programme he completed a semester graduate-coursework at Cornell University. His research took him to Wageningen University and Research Centre (WUR), The Netherlands in 2