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Idah Sithole-Niang (born 1957) is a Zimbabwean biochemist and educator. Her main area of research has been viruses which attack the cowpea, one of the major food crops of Zimbabwe.

Idah Sithole was born in Hwange, Zimbabwe on 2 October 1957. She attended the University of London, on scholarship, earning a BS in biochemistry in 1982. When she was awarded a USAID Fellowship in 1983, Sithole chose to continued her education, studying plant and virus genetics. She earned a PhD in 1988 from Michigan State University (MSU) of Lansing, Michigan. She completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the Plant Research Laboratory at MSU researching the genetics of photosynthesis in cyanobacteria on the first William L. Brown Fellowship, awarded by the Resources Development Foundation. Returning to Zimbabwe, she became a Lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe in 1992 on viruses which infect plants. Her chief area of research is the potyvirus, which attacks the cowpea, a legume which is a chief food crop of Zimbabwe. That same year, she married Sheikh Ibrahima Niang, a Senegalese professor of anthropology, whom she met at Michigan State University. They have a commuting marriage, as he works at the University of Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal. She was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship for careers in Biotechnology between 1992 and 1995. She has continued teaching and researching, publishing numerous papers. In 2006 she was made Associate Professor at the University of Zimbabwe.