Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina with Donald Trump at an international engagement. Credit: Gabriel Akinadewo.

Ademola Adegbamigbe

At a time when some Nigerians have been giving a bad name to the country because they allowed the devil to borrow their creativity, not a few are doing great as wonderful ambassadors. One of them is Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank. In the picture above, he is having a close talk with the US President, Donald Trump, at an international engagement.

Adesina was born to a Nigerian farmer in Ibadan, Oyo State, as written in “Akinwumi Adesina: from farmer’s son to Africa bank chief” (African Spotlight. 28 May 2015). He attended a village school and graduated with a Bachelors in Agricultural Economics with First Class Honors from the University of Ife, Nigeria (1981), where he was the first student to be awarded this distinction by the university. He pursued his studies at Purdue University in Indiana, briefly returning to Nigeria in 1984 to get married. He obtained his PhD (Agricultural Economics) in 1988 from Purdue where he won the Outstanding PhD Thesis for his research work.

From 1990 to 1995, Adesina served as a senior economist at West African Rice Development Association (WARDA) in Bouaké, Ivory Coast.

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 he was an associate director for food security.

Adesina, the Nigerian Agriculture Minister from 2010 to 2015, was named as Forbes African Man of the Year for his reform of Nigerian agriculture.