Alex Barekye was born 53 years ago in Mitooma district, Uganda. He holds a PhD in Plant Breeding from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (Republic of South Africa) and a Masters degree in Business Administration.  He has a Bachelor  and Masters degrees in Agriculture from Makerere University in Agriculture. He started his career with National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO) as a nematologist from 1996 to 2006 when he started developing his career in Banana Breeding. He worked with a team and so far 8 new banana cooking varieties have been released in Uganda.

In 2013 Alex became a director of one of the institutes in NARO specialising in Potato research. His work involved formulating strategic and operational guidelines that helped the organisation to function smoothly, become a centre of excellence, and comply with government laws, policies and guidelines. He provided effective leadership to a team research scientists, finance, procurement and administrative officers achieve in technology generation and technology transfer to increase income and food security of small holder farmers in Uganda. He worked on other crop value chains and other vulnerable groups to support government programs of agro-industrialization.

Alex Barekye, has worked with both local and international collaborators to commercialise technologies, develop crop value chains, build human and infrastructure capacities, technology dissemination, resource mobilisation to mention but a few. Over time he has developed expertise in plant breeding and genetics, variety development, resource mobilization, financial management, strategic management, leadership and change management, and project planning and management. He has published and co-published more than 40 papers in peer reviewed journals.

Since August 2023, he rejoined National Banana Program and he is the current Program leader and the lead breeder for Bananas in Uganda.