Dr Harold Roy-Macauley, a Sierra Leonean national, is currently the Director General of the Africa Rice Center (AfricaRice), which is a CGIAR Research Center and a pan-African association of 26 member countries. 

Dr Roy-Macauley has nearly 30 years of experience in agricultural research with extensive leadership and management expertise. Before joining AfricaRice, he was the Executive Director of the West and Central African Council for Agricultural Research and Development (CORAF/WECARD).

Dr Roy-Macauley has served previously as the Regional Director for the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in West and Central Africa. He has consulted for numerous international and bilateral organizations on biosafety and biotechnology and was the Managing Director for the Regional Center for Improving Adaptation to Drought (CERAAS) in Senegal, a research and training center of CORAF/WECARD.

Dr Roy-Macauley is fluently bilingual in English and French. He obtained his PhD degree in tropical plant biology in 1993 from the Université Denis Diderot, France, his MSc in tropical plant biology in 1988 from the Université de Pierre et Marie Curie, France, and his BSc with Honors in Botany in 1982 from the University of Sierra Leone.