Formerly Nigeria's Minister of Agriculture, Adesina was first elected President of the African Development Bank Group on May 28, 2015.
He was unanimously re-elected for a second five-year term on August 27. 2020.
Adesina graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Agricultural Economics (First Class Honours) from the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), Nigeria in 1981. Dr Adesina holds a Master's degree (1985 ) and a PhD in Agricultural Economics (1988) from Purdue University, United States of America, where he won the award for the best doctoral thesis for that year.
He was awarded the prestigious Rockefeller Foundation Social Science Fellowship in 1988, which launched him into his international career.
A bold reformer, serving as Nigeria's Minister of Agriculture from 2011 to 2015, Adesina turned Nigeria's agricultural sector around in just four years.
Under his tenure, Nigeria ended 40 years of corruption in the fertilizer sector by developing and implementing an innovative e-wallet system that provides farmers with large-scale subsidized agricultural inputs by using their cell phones.
In the first four years of its launch, this e-wallet system has reached 15 million farmers, radically transforming their lives.
With Dr Adesina at the helm, the African Development Bank Group achieved the largest capital increase since its inception in 1964 when, on October 31, 2019, shareholders from 80 member countries raised the general capital to $93 billion to a historic $208 billion.
The African Development Bank Group responded boldly and quickly to the Covid-19 pandemic. On April 3, 2020, the leading development finance institution launched a $3 billion Covid-19 Social Bond, followed by a $10 billion Crisis Response Facility.
Adesina has been recognized with numerous awards. On October 19, 2017, he was awarded the World Food Prize, also known as the “Nobel Prize for Agriculture”.
On February 29, 2020, he was named African of the Year 2019 by one million readers of African Leadership Magazine.
On December 14, 2020, the Academy of Public Health, the flagship body of the West African Institute of Public Health, announced that Dr Adesina was one of the recipients of its 2020 Distinguished Fellowship Award for the successful efforts he has deployed to help Africa limit the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
On February 2, 2022, the President was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Federal University of Technology, Nigeria, recognising his global leadership in agriculture, food security, development finance, and good governance.
ChannelAfrica/Sifiso Hlope
