Prof Sechaba Bareetseng is currently the CSIR IKS Programme Manager within the Advanced Agriculture and Food Cluster and holds a PhD in Microbiology, Master of Management in Innovation Studies, as well as several certificates, such as advanced intellectual property management and bioentrepreneurship. He is currently managing a portfolio of projects and programs on IKS research, development and commercialisation which are funded by the South Africa’s national government and its STI agencies and international organisations, such as the UNDP. He has developed working experience in the SADC region through the AUDA NEPAD SANBio as a Programme Manager, and was the Technical Advisor to the RSA-Finland BioFISA II on IKS and Access and Benefit Sharing and SADC Secretariat on STI on IKS and Access and Benefit Sharing and SADC, respectively. In 2018,  Bareetseng was a visiting scholar at Kansai University in Japan on Traditional Knowledge and Biodiversity; and was part of the fact finding mission team on behalf of the SA DTIC to China, where he visited and interacted with the reserach institutions and pharmaceutical companies involved in the Chinese traditional medicine R&D and manufacturing. He is currently supervising PhD and Masters students on IKS, Microbiology and Biological Sciences at South African universities. He participated at international and local conferences and symposiums as invited speaker on R&D, innovation, biodiversity, IKS and Access and Benefit Sharing.