Tony Bakelana is the WAVE DRC West Country Director. He is a plant protection specialist and a research assistant working with the National Cassava Program of the Institut National pour l’Étude et la Recherche Agronomique (INERA) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). He is currently completing his PhD at the Kinshasa University on the theme “Contributions in the etiology and the epidemiology of cassava root necrosis disease (CRND) in western Democratic Republic of Congo”.…Mr. Bakelana holds a master’s degree in agriculture (plant protection). He studied the relationships between the whitefly vector Bemisia tabaci population abundance and the cassava mosaic disease incidence in different agro-ecological zones of DRC. He has also identified viruses involved in the spread of cassava mosaic disease in DRC, especially ACMD (African Cassava Mosaic Virus), EACMV (East African Cassava Mosaic Virus) and EACMV-Ug (East African Cassava Mosaic Virus – Uganda).