Idah Sithole-Niang is Professor at the University of Zimbabwe's Department of Biochemistry which she joined in 1992. She obtained a Phd in Biochemistry at Michigan State University (MSU) working on chicken and turkey herpersviruses. She pursued post doctoral training at the Plant Research Laboratory at MSU working on the genetics of photosynthesis in cyanobacteria. She has been working on the genetic improvement of cowpea for two decades and co-founded the Network for the Genetic Improvement of Cowpea for Africa (NGICA) with Prof. Larry Murdock of Purdue University, USA in order to bring useful and meaningful resources to this neglected crop. The cowpea project is now one of the flagship projects at the African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) with Bt cowpea undergoing four seasons of confined field trials in Nigeria, two seasons in Burkina Faso and now destined for Ghana in July 2013.

Idah has worked on biotechnology and biosafety capacity development for 2 decades within Zimbabwe and several sub-Saharan African countries including, Malawi, Mozambique, Botswana, Zambia and Namibia. She acts as a Technical Advisor for sub-Saharan Africa on the Program for Biosafety Systems, and chairs the Board of Trustees of the AATF.