Mr. Akinwumi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank, has been
named the winner of this year’s World Food Prize.
The prestigious U.S.$250,000 prize is given annually to a person who has
worked to advance human development by “improving the quality, quantity or
availability of food in the world”.
Over a 31-year existence, the award has become known as the ‘Nobel Prize’
for food and agriculture.
Monday’s announcement by the president of the World Food Prize, Kenneth
Quinn, was made at a ceremony held at the U.S. Department of Agriculture
attended by U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue. Since its
founding in 1986, the Prize has honoured 45 individuals for their
outstanding contributions to food security around the world.
“These individuals have been at the forefront of every major breakthrough
in agriculture and food production in the last 30 years”, Mr. Quinn told
AllAfrica in a telephone interview before Monday’s announcement. He said
the laureates have led the “single greatest period of food production and
hunger reduction in all human history”.
Nominations for the prize, he said, are submitted by organizations and
prestigious individuals. A selection committee – made of individuals from
around the world – makes the decision.
Mr. Quinn announced that the committee noted a couple of “distinct
achievements” of Mr. Adesina: his role in organizing and making the
African fertilizer summit a “great success”; his work with leading
non-profit organizations and banks to expand the availability of
commercial credits to agriculture and farmers across the continent when he
was a senior executive of the Alliance of Green Revolution of Africa; the
digital e-wallet scheme during his five-year tenure as minister of
agriculture of Nigeria, which helped tackle corruption that had pervaded
the fertilizer industry.
Mr. Quinn said Mr. Adesina has helped galvanize support to transform
agriculture on the continent through his various initiatives which
increased farmers’ yield and incomes. “All of his policies were very
farmer friendly, and he became known as the ‘farmer’s minister’”. The
committee was also “taken” by Adesina’s own life that began with him
growing up in a poor village, and how education “allowed him to lift
himself up,” Mr. Quinn said.
The AfDB president came from a family of farmers. With some education,
however, his dad got a job as a civil servant which provided the means to
send his four sons to school. Adesina, the second, experienced the poverty
of smallholder farmers and their families during his years of schooling in
the village.
Mr. Adesina told AllAfrica that he was thrilled when he first learned that
he had been selected as this year’s winner for the work he’s done over the
years.
“But for me it’s not about the past as much as even the future; I feel
greatly inspired and motivated to do even more until we free Africa and
the world of hunger”.
He is excited about what lies ahead. “I see a future where agriculture is
treated as a business, not as a way of life; I see a continent in the next
ten years that will be able to feed itself; I see a continent that will be
able to transform its rural economy from zones of misery to zones of
economic prosperity; I see a continent that is able to end malnutrition”.
Since he became president, he said, the bank has committed itself to a
strategy which aims to end hunger and rural poverty on the continent in
the next decade. Feed Africa, the second of the AfDB’s top five priorities
to which it has already committed $24 billion, was launched at its
headquarters in Abidjan last year.
Mr. Adesina said some of the areas of focus of the new plan will be “how
to get technology to farmers – at the scale of millions of farmers all
across Africa – and how to get the youth to be involved in agriculture as
a business”.
He will be at the centre of attention this week in Des Moines, Iowa, where
guests from dozens of countries, including scientists, ministers, CEOs and
heads of NGOs will gather for a week of activities. He is scheduled to
speak at various events including the “Borlaug Dialogue”, a symposium
which organisers say brings together 1,200 people from 65 countries, named
after Norman Borlaug, the 1970 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize who
conceived the idea of the World Food Prize.
Mr. Adesina said he doesn’t seek the spotlight: “You know you never work
for recognition. I was just doing by job, which is to improve the lives of
farmers,” he said. “But it’s such a great honour for that work to be
recognized for the impact it’s having across the world”.
(This story was first published by AllAfrica.com. We have their permission
to republish).