As President of AGRA, Dr. Kalibata leads the organization’s efforts with public and private partners to ensure a food secure and prosperous Africa through rapid, sustainable agricultural growth, improving the productivity and livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers.

Prior to joining AGRA in September 2014, Dr. Kalibata was Rwanda’s Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources (MINAGRI). In this role, she was widely considered to be one of the most successful Agriculture Ministers in sub-Saharan Africa. Dr. Kalibata has held several other leadership positions, including Permanent Secretary of Ministry of Agriculture and Deputy Vice Chancellor of University of Rwanda. She also worked for the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Uganda, and various other agricultural development organizations.  She sits on various boards including the International Fertilizer Development Corporation (IFDC), Bioversity International, Africa Risk Capacity, the Malabo-Montpellier Panel, and is a member of the Global Agenda Council of the World Economic Forum.

Dr. Kalibata has a distinguished track record as an agricultural scientist, policy maker and thought leader. She holds a doctorate in Entomology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Strive Masiyiwa is the Founder and Executive Chairman of Econet Group, a pan-African telecommunications, media and technology company with operations and investments in over 20 countries.

Masiyiwa serves on a number of international boards including Unilever Plc, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Council on Foreign Relations’ Global Advisory Board, the Africa Progress Group, and the Hilton Foundation’s Humanitarian Prize Jury. Masiyiwa also serves as Chairman of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), a position he took over after Kofi Annan’s term.

As a philanthropist, Masiyiwa is a member of the Giving Pledge, and his contributions to education, health and development have been widely recognized. Masiyiwa and his wife finance the Higher Life Foundation, which has supported the education of over 250,000 African orphans in 20 years. Their family foundation provides scholarships to over 40,000 African orphans every year.

Masiyiwa has been selected twice, in 2014 and 2017, to Fortune Magazine’s list of the “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders”.

Over the last few years, Masiyiwa has devoted his time to mentoring the next generation of African entrepreneurs through his Facebook page, which has a growing followership of nearly 3-million young people from across the continent. Facebook has identified his platform as the most engaging of any business leader in the world.

Dr. Shah brings over twenty years of experience in business, government, and philanthropy to The Rockefeller Foundation.  Appointed as USAID Administrator by President Obama in 2009, and unanimously confirmed by the Senate, Dr. Shah was charged with reshaping the $20 billion agency’s operations to provide greater assistance to pressing development challenges around the globe.

By elevating the importance of innovation, promoting public-private partnerships, rethinking internal practices, and shifting how dollars were spent to deliver stronger results, Shah secured bipartisan support that enabled USAID to dramatically accelerate its work to end extreme poverty.  Despite partisan gridlock on many issues, two significant Presidential priorities – Feed the Future and Power Africa – passed the House and Senate with bipartisan support and were signed into law by President Obama, and the Global Food Security Act is the second largest global development legislation after PEPFAR.

Shah’s work Shah’s work delivered results for countries facing democratic transitions, post-conflict situations, and humanitarian crises, and is widely credited with providing life-saving access to food, health, and water for millions of children across the planet.

Dr. Kenneth M. Quinn, former U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Cambodia, assumed the leadership of the World Food Prize Foundation on January 1, 2000, following his retirement from the State Department after a 32-year career in the Foreign Service.

Inspired by the vision of Dr. Norman E. Borlaug, the founder of the World Food Prize, Ambassador Quinn has endeavored to build this annual $250,000 award into “the Nobel Prize for Food and Agriculture.” Held each October in Des Moines on or around World Food Day (October 16), the World Food Prize Laureate Award Ceremony, Borlaug Dialogue international symposium and Global Youth Institute have grown in size and stature under his direction.

With the support of the John Ruan family, Dr. Quinn has led the campaign which successfully raised $29.8 million to restore the historic Des Moines Public Library and transform it into the World Food Prize Dr. Norman E. Borlaug Hall of Laureates. He provided the personal leadership to have the building designed to achieve LEED Platinum certification, the highest possible level of energy efficiency and resource conservation.

More recently, he served as Chairman of the Dr. Norman E. Borlaug Statue Committee, leading the campaign that unveiled the statue of Dr. Borlaug on March 25, 2014. In addition, on May 30, 2014, Dr. Quinn was presented with the prestigious Iowa Award by the Governor of Iowa, Terry Branstad. The Iowa Award represents the state’s highest citizen award and is presented only once every few years. Recipients of the Iowa Award have included remarkable Iowans like President Herbert Hoover, Vice President Henry A. Wallace, Dr. Norman Borlaug, Mr. John Ruan Sr., and Professor George Washington Carver.

During his diplomatic career, Ken Quinn served: as a Rural Development advisor in the Mekong Delta; on the National Security Council staff at the White House; as Narcotics Counselor at the U.S. mission to the United Nations in Vienna; and for four years as Chairman of the U.S. Inter-agency Task Force on POW/MIAs. In 1979, while on the staff of Governor Robert Ray, he was the Director of Iowa SHARES, the humanitarian campaign that sent Iowa doctors, nurses, medical supplies and food to starving Cambodian refugees.

Dr. Quinn emerged from these experiences as one of the U.S. government’s foremost experts on Indochina. He wrote his doctoral dissertation on the origins of the radical Pol Pot regime and is widely acknowledged as the first person anywhere to report, in 1974, on the genocidal policies of the Khmer Rouge. Twenty years later, while serving as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, his plan of agricultural enhancements and rural roads led to the final eradication of the Khmer Rouge.

A fluent speaker of Vietnamese during his diplomatic career, Dr. Quinn acted as interpreter for President Gerald Ford at the White House and personally negotiated the first ever entry by U.S. personnel into a Vietnamese prison to search for U.S. POW/MIAs. He was also a member of the first U.S. team to gain entry to a former Soviet prison in Russia.

Ambassador Quinn rose to become one of the most decorated Foreign Service officers of his generation, recognized for the important role he played in humanitarian endeavors, as well as for his actions in dangerous and violent situations.

His honors include:

• The Secretary of State’s Award for Heroism and Valor for his efforts to protect American citizens exposed to danger in Cambodia, as well as the four lifesaving rescues in which he participated in Vietnam;
• Being the only civilian to ever receive the U.S. Army Air Medal for his participation in helicopter combat operations in Vietnam;
• Being the only Foreign Service officer ever to have three times received the American Foreign Service Association Rivkin and Herter Awards for intellectual courage in challenging policy.

Ambassador Quinn, a graduate of Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa, has a M.A. in Political Science from Marquette University and a Ph.D. in International Relations from the University of Maryland. He and his wife Le Son have three adult children.

Dr. Jennifer Blanke is Vice-President Agriculture, Human and Social Development at the African Development Bank Group, responsible for overseeing the Bank’s strategy and activities in this area. She was previously Chief Economist at the World Economic Forum, overseeing economic research activities and projects. She has written and lectured extensively on issues related to national competitiveness. ​Blanke holds a doctoral degree in International Economics from the Graduate Institute in Geneva, Switzerland, as well as a Master of International Affairs and International Economic Policy from Columbia University in New York.. She is also presently a member of the Canadian government’s Council of Economic Growth and holds a number of non-executive board responsibilities in the not-for-profit sector.

Mamadou Biteye is the Managing Director for The Rockefeller Foundation Africa Regional Office. In this role, Biteye oversees the Foundation’s work across Africa, which includes initiatives in youth employment, health, philanthropy, agriculture and food security, among others.

Biteye has a wealth of expertise in the development sector in Africa. An agricultural economist by training, he has over twenty-five years’ experience in strategic leadership, program development and implementation, public policy analysis, advocacy and campaigning and community participatory development.

Some noteworthy achievements from his career include co-designing a micro-finance programme with Oxfam that is today improving the lives of over 700, 000 women in Mali and Senegal; Playing a key role in the development of policy processes in West Africa e.g. the ECOWAS’ Convention on Small Arms, and the ECOWAS’ regional mining directives. His accomplishments at the Foundation include executing Digital Jobs Africa, an initiative to connect Africa’s youth to jobs in the ICT sector; Leading the design and implementation of YieldWise, a $130m effort to halve post-harvest loss in Kenya, Tanzania and Nigeria; At policy level, convening the Leadership for Agriculture (L4Ag) network of African ministers of agriculture and ministers of finance, a platform to enable them work better together to invest more to transform the sector; Co-creating PIATA, a new $280m Partnership for Inclusive Agricultural Transformation in Africa, among others.

Biteye is an honorary Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE), awarded for work done under Oxfam GB, where he had been Regional Director for West Africa before joining the Foundation. He is a member of several advisory boards, including the World Economic Forum’s Futures Council on Agriculture and Food Security.

Arne Cartridge is a lead strategist and practitioner in developing public-private partnerships for a sustainable development. He is currently Senior Adviser and Head of Global Initiatives at Yara International. He previously held positions as the Executive Director of Grow Africa, Senior Director at the World Economic Forum, Executive Vice President with Yara International ASA, and has held senior management positions with Telenor, Gazette, and Digital Equipment Corp. Mr. Cartridge is the initiator of the African Green Revolution Forum and the Yara Prize, now the Africa Food Prize and is the Chair of the Farm to Market Alliance. Cartridge has served as the Chairman of the Board for the humanitarian organization CARE Norway, been on the board of CARE International and on the board of the Global Fairness Initiative, and been acting Managing Director for the Food and Land Use Initiative at the World Business Council on Sustainable Development.

Dr. Ousmane Badiane, recipient of the Africa Food Prize in 2015 and a Distinguished Fellow of the African Association of Agricultural Economists, is the Director for Africa at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). He oversees the institute’s programs and partnerships in Africa. As an Advisor to the NEPAD Secretariat from 2004 to 2007, he was instrumental in developing and guiding the implementation of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP). Before his current tenure at IFPRI, Dr. Badiane was Lead Specialist for Food and Agricultural Policy for the Africa Department at the World Bank and Adjunct Professor for Economics of Development in Africa at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. Dr. Badiane received a Masters Degree and PhD in agricultural economics from the University of Kiel in Germany. He is also recipient of a Doctoral Degree Honoris Causa from the University of KwaZulu Natal in South Africa

Mr. Mostafa TERRAB has served since June 2008 as Chairman and CEO of the OCP Group, a global leader in the phosphate sector. After being appointed Director General of the Office Chérifien des Phosphates, OCP’s predecessor entity, in February 2006, he led its transformation from a state administration to a global corporation.

Mr. TERRAB’s distinguished career has spanned the public, private and university sectors and a range of expert fields. After an engineering degree from the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (Paris, France 1979), he received an M.S. (1982) and Ph.D. (1990) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Mr. TERRAB worked for Bechtel Civil and Minerals Inc. (1983/85) in San Francisco, California, as an analyst in transportation systems. From 1988 to 1990, he was a fellow of Draper Laboratory, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Between 1990 and 1992, he was an assistant professor at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, where he held joint appointments in the Department of Decision Sciences and Engineering Systems and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Between 1992 and 1998, Mr. TERRAB was an advisor in the Royal Cabinet, Rabat, a period during which he also served as Secretary General of the Middle East/North Africa Economic Summit.

In 1998, he was appointed as the first Director General of the Moroccan National Telecommunications Regulatory Agency (ANRT). He joined the World Bank in 2002 as Lead Regulatory Specialist in the Global Information and Communications Department; he also headed the World Bank’s Information for Development (INFODEV) program.

Michael Hailu has been Director of the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) since May 2010. He has more than 30 years of experience in agricultural research, communications and development in Africa and Asia. Prior to joining CTA, he held senior leadership positions at the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in Nairobi, Kenya and at the Center for International Forestry Research in Indonesia.

Mr Hailu has implemented  major strategic realignment of the CTA refocusing the Centre’s work on promoting innovations and capacities to advance youth and women entrepreneurship, digitalization and climate resilience in agriculture. He has degrees from the Universities of Pittsburgh, USA and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and has been trained in strategic leadership at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business in the United States.

His Excellency Former President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete served as the President of the United Republic of Tanzania for two terms. He holds a degree in Economics from the University of Dar es Salaam and started his career in the ruling party and the military, where he rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel before retiring from the army in 1992. He joined the Cabinet in 1988 and held several ministerial portfolios including Minister for Finance, Minister for Water, Energy and Mineral Resources and Minister for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation. During his tenure in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he led Tanzania’s efforts to bring about peace in the Great Lakes region, particularly in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). As Chairman of East African Community’s Council of Ministers, he played a pivotal role in moving forward the process of regional integration in East Africa, particularly the delicate negotiations of establishing a Customs Union between Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda. He also Co-chaired the Helsinki Process on Globalization and Democracy with the Foreign Minister of Finland. In 2007, President Kikwete was elected Chairman of the SADC Organ on Security, Defense and Politics. On 31 January 2008, President Kikwete was elected Chairman of the African Union Assembly of Heads of States and Government, where he took a proactive role in the resolution of conflicts in the Republic of Kenya, the Comoros and the Democratic Republic of Congo. He also advanced to greater heights the relations between the AU and the UN, EU and International Community at large. He has completed his Chairmanship of the East African Community and it was during his tenure that the EAC signed and ratified the Protocol on the Common Market. He left negotiations on the Monetary Union at an advanced stage. On retirement he spends time in his home village of Msoga where he is a dairy farmer and Kiwangwa where he grows pineapples and papayas.

Prof. Richard Mkandawire is a Socio-economist and a Rural Development expert. He is currently; the Director of the Alliance for African Partnership (AAP), Africa Secretariat and Chairman, Malawi Planning Commission. Before joining AAP, he worked as Vice President of the African Fertilizer and Agribusiness Partnership (AFAP) where he led a team of experts in driving innovative interventions for efficient and effective delivery of fertilizers among smallholder famers in Africa.

Prior to joining AFAP, Prof Mkandawire was Senior Advisor to the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), where he was the principal architect in the design of NEPAD’s Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) and a catalyzer for its acceptance by African Heads of State and Donor Agencies. During CAADP’s critical initial decade, he served as CAADP’s heart and soul, as well as its public face.

Prof Mkandawire academic career includes teaching and research at Bunda College of Agriculture (LUANAR) where he was at the helm of leadership in the establishment of the Centre for Agriculture Research and Development (CARD).  He also served as an external examiner to a number of Universities in East and Southern Africa.

Prof. Mkandawire development initiatives have been recognized across the continent. In 2008 he received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Kwazulu Natal for his work in spearheading the CAADP agenda and in 2008 he was an awardee of “Drivers of Change” for his leadership in driving CAADP acceptance by African Heads of State and Government and development partners. In 2012 the University of Pretoria appointed him as “Extra-Ordinary Professor” for his contribution to spearheading agriculture transformation in Africa.

Gilbert F. Houngbo became the sixth President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) on 1 April 2017. Born and raised in rural Togo, Houngbo has spent more than 30 years working to improve the lives of some of the world’s most vulnerable people, and has extensive experience in political affairs, international development, diplomacy and financial management.

Prior to his appointment as IFAD President, Houngbo was the Deputy Director-General of the International Labour Organization (ILO), where he led field operations in more than 100 countries and managed bilateral and multilateral partnerships.

From 2008 to 2012, he served as Prime Minister of the Togolese Republic, where he introduced economic reforms and enhanced the rule of law and civil liberties. From 1996 to 2008, he undertook a number of roles at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), including Chief of Staff, Assistant Secretary-General and Africa Regional Director, and led poverty alleviation programmes in 45 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Before this, he spent a decade in the private sector, including at Price Waterhouse, Canada, where he worked in Audit and Financial Advisory Services.

Houngbo has a Matrîse en gestion des entreprises from the University of Lomé, Togo, and a Diplôme d’Etudes Supérieures Spécialisées in Specialised Accounting from the University of Quebec, Canada. He is a member of the Canadian Institute of Chartered Professional Accountants.