Salibo Somé, founder of Africa’s Sustainable Development Council, will deliver the 2010 Darl Snyder Lecture March 4 at the University of Georgia in Athens, Ga.

The lecture will begin at 10 a.m. in Masters Hall at the Georgia Center for Continuing Education and is free and open to the public.

As executive director for Africa’s Sustainable Development Council, Somé has helped raise more than $4.3 million to support people across Africa. Focusing on literacy and micro-enterprise development in agriculture, livestock and forestry, Somé has helped 7,500 men, women and children living in 106 villages since founding the program in 1998.

His vision for a sustainable nation began when he was a child growing up in Burkina Faso. After earning a master’s in entomology and a doctorate in crop and soil science from the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, he returned to rural Africa. Somé is multi-lingual, speaking six languages, and has authored or co-authored several articles on sustainability and entomology.

Since 1992, the UGA African Studies Institute has invited accomplished scholars in African Studies to lecture in honor of Darl Snyder.

A pioneer in the development of African studies at UGA, Snyder established numerous linkages with African universities. His UGA career began in 1969 at the Rural Development Center in Tifton, Ga. During his 27-year tenure at UGA, he established the worldwide Collaborative Research Support Program on peanuts and implemented a USAID-funded agricultural human resource development program. This led to the creation of an agricultural research station at the University of Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso.

A fellowship fund, created in Snyder’s honor, helps fund student trips to Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa.