AKINWUMI ADESINA
Dr Akinwumi Adesina, is a distinguished development economist and agricultural development expert with over 25 years of international experience. He was the 8th elected President of the
African Development Bank Group(AFDB), a position he was elected to in 2015 and was re-elected for a second term in 2020 and is the first Nigerian to serve as President of the Bank Group.
Prior to his position at the AFDB, Adesina served as Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development in 2010, until his appointment in
2015. As a minister, he turned the agriculture sector of Nigeria around within four years. Under his tenure, Nigeria ended 40 years of corruption in the fertilizer sector by developing and implementing an innovative electronic wallet system, which directly provides farmers with subsidized farm inputs at scale using their mobile phones. Within the first four years of launch, this electronic wallet system reached 14.5 million farmers, dramatically transforming their lives. A firm believer in private sector led growth; he changed the perception of agriculture in Nigeria from that of subsistence to a viable business undertaking, which successfully attracted $5.6 billion in private sector investment commitments. Before he re-election Adesina’s first term as
President, restructured the bank and refined its focus through a High5 strategy that has directly impacted the lives of millions of Africans. This was through strategic investments in energy and electricity, agriculture technologies that significantly improve food security, access to private sector finance, improved transport infrastructure, and water and sanitation.
Before his re-election he was accused of a certain number of allegations of appointments and departures deemed questionable and several contracts approved under his leadership that were in violation of the bank’s statutory and ethical rules. This made the U.S Treasury Secretary, Steven Mnuchin, call for an independent probe into the allegations made by a group of whistleblowers against the AfDB President. Adesina insisted on his innocence and has since been cleared by the bank’s Ethics Committee of all charges brought against him.
It is an acknowledged fact that Akinwumi Adesina is a global player of impeccable character who has helped mobilize billions of dollars for Africa and helped accelerate the continent’s development. It is why the Executive Committee of the Africa Union, speaking for 55 African countries, unanimously endorsed him as the sole candidate for re-election to a second term. This was vital for Africa’s continued economic growth, infrastructure and investment.
Adesina led the Bank’s bold and decisive COVID19 response with a $10 billion COVID-19 Response Facility to cushion economic and social impacts of the pandemic on the continent. This, is in addition to the successful launch of an oversubscribed $3 billion Fight COVID19 social bond on the London Stock Exchange, making the largest US dollar denominated social bond ever in world history.
It also worthy to note he is Vice President of Policy and Partnerships for the Alliance for a Green Revolution in
Africa (AGRA) and 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.
Adesina was born to a Nigerian farmer in Ibadan, Oyo State. He attended a village school and graduated with a Bachelor’s in Agricultural Economics with First Class Honors from the University of Ife, Nigeria in 1981, where he was the first student to be awarded this distinction by the university. In 1988 he completed a PhD in Agricultural Economics at Purdue University in the United States, where he won the Outstanding PhD Thesis Award for his research work. He also won the prestigious Rockefeller Foundation Social Science Post-Doctoral Fellowship in 1988, which launched his international career in global agricultural development and 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. He was named Person of the Year by Forbes Africa magazine in 2013. Akinwumi Adesina, 60, is also a charismatic speaker known for his elegant suits and bow ties and speaks Enlish and French fluently.