Nigerian Agriculture Minister Akinwumi Adesina was elected president of the African Development Bank, beating other candidates from the continent’s west.
Adesina secured 58 percent of the votes in the final round at a meeting in Abidjan, Ivory Coast on Thursday and will take over as head of the development bank on Sept. 1, the AfDB said on its Twitter feed. He faced off against Chadian Finance Minister Kordje Bedoumra, who secured 32 percent support, and his counterpart from Cape Verde, Cristina Duarte, at 10 percent.
Adesina, known for his trademark bow tie and mustache, became agriculture minister in 2011 after former central bank Governor Lamido Sanusi recommended him to outgoing President Goodluck Jonathan. Adesina had impressed Sanusi with his work on programs to improve agriculture credit. Adesina has said the AfDB needs to focus on promoting investment by businesses.
“He is an example of a leader in the Nigerian political space who has done well,” Ebenezer Essoka, vice chairman for Africa at Standard Chartered Plc, said in an interview.
Adesina, 55, takes over from Donald Kaberuka, 63, at a time when falling prices of oil, copper and other commodities dim the outlook for economic growth and investment in Africa. The AfDB’s loans and grants amounted to $7.8 billion in 2014, 22 percent more than the previous year.
As agriculture minister, Adesina has tried to revitalize farming after decades of neglect following the discovery of oil in Nigeria in the 1950s. He has been praised for bringing more transparency to fertilizer subsidies, a program riddled with corruption in the past. Nigeria’s government estimates that food production increased by 21 million metric tons during his tenure.
He received a bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Economics from the (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.
Source: allafrica
