Background, Early life and education
Born on February 6, 1960, Adesina was born to a Nigerian farmer in Ibadan, Oyo State. He attended a village school and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Economics with First Class Honors from the University of Ife, Nigeria (1981), where he was the first student to be awarded this distinction by the university. He pursued his studies at Purdue University in Indiana, briefly returning to Nigeria in 1984 to get married. He obtained his PhD (Agricultural Economics) in 1988 from Purdue where he won the Outstanding PhD Thesis for his research work. He also won the prestigious Rockefeller Foundation Social Science Post-Doctoral Fellowship in 1988.
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Adesina: A Sterling Career
From 1990 to 1995, Adesina served as a senior economist at West African Rice Development Association (WARDA) in Bouaké, Ivory Coast. He worked at the Rockefeller Foundation since winning a fellowship from the Foundation as a senior scientist in 1988, which launched his international career in global agricultural development. From 1999 to 2003, he was the representative of the Foundation for the southern African area. From 2003 until 2008 he was an associate director for food security.
Adesina was the Nigerian Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development from 2010 to 2015. During that time, he implemented bold policy reforms in the fertilizer sector and pursued innovative agricultural investment programs to expand opportunities for the private sector. Adesina was named Forbes African Man of the Year for his reform of Nigerian agriculture. He introduced more transparency into the fertiliser supply chain. He also said that he would give away mobile phones to farmers but this proved too difficult. One of the reasons was the lack of a mobile network in country areas.
In 2010, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon appointed him as one of 17 global leaders to spearhead the Millennium Development Goals. In September 2016, Adesina was appointed by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to serve as member of the Lead Group of the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement.
On 28 May 2015, Adesina was elected the presumptive President of the African Development Bank. He began his tenure of the office on 1 September 2015. He was elected to the position on May 28, 2015 by the Bank’s Board of Governors at its Annual Meetings in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. Adesina, as a distinguished development economist and agricultural development expert with 25 years of international experience is the first Nigerian to serve as President of the Bank Group.
Adesina: An Outstanding Track Record
Before his appointment as a Federal minister in Nigeria, he was Vice-President (Policy and Partnerships) of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). He was also Associate Director (Food Security) at the Rockefeller Foundation in New York, where he worked for a decade (1998-2008) in senior leadership positions, including as Regional Office Director and Representative for Southern Africa.
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In addition to that, Adesina was Principal Economist and Social Science Research Coordinator for the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Principal Economist and Coordinator of the West Africa Rice Economics Task Force at the West Africa Rice Development Association (WARDA) and an Assistant Principal Economist at the International Crop Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). From 2008 to 2010, Adesina was the President of the African Association of Agricultural Economists.
Adesina has received a number of global awards for his leadership and work in agriculture. In 2010, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon appointed him as one of 17 global leaders to spearhead the Millennium Development Goals, along with Bill Gates, the Spanish Prime Minister and the President of Rwanda.
Recognition and Honours
In 2013, he was named as Forbes Africa Person of the Year.
In 2017, he was awarded 2017 World Food Prize.
In 2018 he was awarded an Honorary Doctor by Afe Babalola University.
In 2019, He was given the honour, Grand Officer of the National Order of Merit of Tunisia.
In 2019, he was named Forbes magazine African of the year.
On January 28, 2020, he was awarded Honorary Doctor of Science by the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Nigeria.
While at Purdue University Adesina and his wife, along with another couple, started a Christian group called the African Student Fellowship. A feat worth recognizing. Adesina speaks fluent French and English.
Sources:
Wikipedia
AFDB
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