When you listen to Dr Akin Adesina deliver an address on what he believes and has done to transform African Agriculture and development landscape – there is no doubt that he is one the key game changers in African development. When you listen to him – you hear a true son of Africa with a deep yearning to innovate and create new products and pathways for transforming Africa – beginning from what we have at present to design “the future we want. Akin speaks with conviction, belief and urgency.

Dr. Adesina is a distinguished agricultural development expert with 24 years of global experience in developing and managing successful agricultural programs. He graduated with Bachelors in Agricultural Economics with First Class Honors from the University of Ife, Nigeria (1981) and obtained his PhD in Agricultural Economics in 1988 from Purdue University, USA where he won the Outstanding PhD Thesis Award for his research work. He won the prestigious Rockefeller Foundation Social Science Post-Doctoral Fellowship in 1988, which launched him into an illustrious international career in global agricultural development.

Until his appointment as the Honorable Minister of Agriculture on July 14, 2011, he was the Vice President for the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), set up by Bill and Melinda Gates and Rockefeller Foundations. He had been an Associate Director (Food Security) at the Rockefeller Foundation New York, where he worked for a decade (1998- 2008) in senior leadership positions, including as Regional Office Director and Representative for Southern Africa. He was Principal Economist and Social Science Research Coordinator for the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) from 1995 to 1998. He was Principal Economist and Coordinator of the West Africa Rice Economics Task Force at the West Africa Rice Development Association (WARDA) from 1990-1995. He was an Assistant Principal Economist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) from 1988-1990. He was the President of the African Association of Agricultural Economists from 2008-2010.

Dr Adesina has received over a dozen global awards for his leadership and work in agriculture. In 2007 he was awarded the prestigious YARA Prize in Oslo, Norway for his leadership in pioneering innovative approaches for improving access of farmers in Africa to agricultural inputs. He was awarded the Borlaug CAST Award in 2010 by the Council for Agricultural Science and Technology, USA, for his global leadership on agricultural science and technology. He was awarded the Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters by Franklin and Marshall College, USA, in 2010, for his global leadership on agriculture and improving the lives and livelihoods of the poor. In 2010, the United Nations Secretary General Ban ki-Moon appointed Dr. Adesina as one of the 17 global leaders to spearhead the Millennium Development Goals, along with Bill Gates, Prime Minister of Spain and President of Rwanda, among others.

In his position as the Minister of Agriculture for Nigeria, Dr. Adesina has aggressively implemented bold policy reforms, ended decades of corruption in the fertilizer sector and pursued innovative agricultural investment programs to expand opportunities for the private sector to add value to crops produced in Nigeria. His passionate commitment is driving a new wave of change in agriculture in Nigeria, moving it away from a development program into a business, to reduce dependency on food imports, generate wealth and create jobs.