Niels Röling (1937) is Professor Emeritus of Innovation and Communication Studies at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. He has co-supervised some 70 doctoral dissertations. One of his principle interests is agricultural innovation among subsistence farmers in West Africa, and the institutional and other higher system level conditions for it. He has been a scientific coordinator for the Convergence of Sciences (CoS) project in Benin and Ghana, and a five-year sequel that is to take place in Benin, Burkina, Ghana and Mali has been approved in principle by the Dutch Directorate General International Cooperation (DGIS) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He is one of the voluntary authors and chapter editors of the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD).