Akinwumi Adesina

Akinwumi Adesina
Akinwumi Adesina in 2014
8th President of the African Development Bank
Taking office 1 September 2015
Succeeding	Donald Kaberuka
Nigerian Agriculture Minister
In office 2010–2015
Preceded by	Abba Sayyadi Ruma
Succeeded by	Audu Ogbeh
Personal details
Nationality	Nigerian
Alma mater	University of Ife Purdue University (PhD)

Akinwumi Adesina is the President of the African Development Bank. He previously served as Nigeria's Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development. Until his appointment as Minister in 2010, he was Vice President of Policy and Partnerships for the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA). In 2015, he was elected as the President of the African Development Bank. He was the first Nigerian to hold the post.

Adesina was born to a Nigerian farmer in Ogun State. He received a bachelor's degree in Agricultural Economics from the University of Ife (Obafemi Awolowo University) and a PhD in Agricultural Economics from Purdue University (1988).

He worked at the Rockefeller Foundation since winning a fellowship from the Foundation as a senior scientist in 1988. From 1999 to 2003 he was the representative of the Foundation for the southern African area. From 2003 until 2008 to the present he was an associate director for food security.

Adesina was the Nigerian Agriculture Minister from 2010 to 2015. During this time the Permanent Secretary at the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development was Ibukun Odusote. Adesina was named as 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.

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 is the eighth president in the organization's history, and the first Nigerian to hold the post.

He launched a strategy based on energy, agriculture, industrialization, regional integration and bettering Africans' lives. The Board of Executive Directors approved the reorganization of the structure around these five priorities. He also intends to launch 5 regional hubs to make the approvals next to the ground.