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), Institute of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry, the Strategic Advisory Council of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH).

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.

Mr. Masiyiwa is from Zimbabwe and is the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Econet Wireless International, based in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is also a Trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation. In 2002, Mr. Masiyiwa was named to the Time Magazine List of Most Influential People, and in March 2014, he was selected to Fortune Magazine’s list of the “World’s 50 Greatest Leaders.” He is one of Africa’s most influential figures, and a champion for the power of technology to improve the lives of millions of Africa’s smallholders.

Kofi Annan, the founding chair of the Kofi Annan Foundation, is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and was the Secretary-General of the United Nations between 1997 and 2006. With the Foundation, Kofi Annan seeks to mobilise political will to overcome threats to peace, development and human rights. Mr. Annan is the Board Chair Emeritus of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, which works for a food secure and prosperous Africa by supporting smallholder farmers. He also chaired the African Progress Panel, which advocates for equitable and sustainable development in Africa, until its 2017 transition to Nigeria. Kofi Annan continues to serve as Chair of The Elders, an independent group of global leaders who work together for peace and human rights.

Dr. 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).He is an Agricultural development expert with 24 years of experience in developing and managing successful agricultural programs across Africa. He graduated with Bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Economics with First Class Honours from the University of Ife, Nigeria (1981). He obtained his PhD degree in Agricultural Economics in 1988 from Purdue University, USA, where he won the Outstanding PhD Thesis for his research work

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 CEO 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 (AGRF) and the Yara Prize, now the Africa Food Prize and has served as the Chair of the Board for the humanitarian organization CARE Norway, been on the board of CARE International, 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. Mr. Cartridge is the Chair of the Farm to Market Alliance (FtMA) and a member of the Management Team for the Food and Land Use Coalition (FOLU).

Anne-Marie has over 25 years’ experience in African financial and private sector development, with Development Finance Institutions, Consulting/Advisory Firms and Private Equity Funds, managing investment and development finance projects in 32 African Anglo, Franco and Luso-phone countries. She has worked during the course of her career for the World Bank, DFID and other DFIs. She joined, Alitheia IDF Managers as a Principal Partner and Co-Founder,  to raise a US $100 million Pan-African private equity fund, anchored by the African Development Bank, for growth SMEs focusing on women led business. In recent years, she was CEO of the Financial Sector Deepening-Mozambique (FSDMoç) fund, financed by the UK Government’s Department for International Development (DFID), now acting as Advisor.  She was also given the mandate to manage a distressed US $20 million Pan African private equity portfolio for micro-finance, AfriCap Micro-finance Investment Company, returning capital to shareholders.

As a leader in development finance, she sits on the Boards of  the USD310million Africa Enterprise Challenge Fund,  the Financial Sector Deepening Fund Africa, and Untu Micro-finance Bank-Zimbabwe. She is also an Africa Advisory Council Member of Women’s World Banking, past member of Making Finance Work for Africa-AfDB, and founding member of a Pan African network of Women in Finance, NFNV. Anne-Marie is a Zimbabwean, and holds a BSc Psychology, McGill University, Montreal and MA Economics, University of Toronto, Canada.

Sara Menker is founder and CEO of Gro Intelligence, a technology company that is bridging data gaps across the global agriculture sector, empowering decision makers and creating a more informed, connected, efficient and productive global agriculture industry.

Prior to founding Gro, Menker was a vice president in Morgan Stanley’s commodities group. She began her career in commodities risk management, where she covered all commodity markets, and she subsequently moved to trading, where she managed a trading portfolio.

Menker is a trustee of the Mandela Institute For Development Studies (MINDS) and a trustee of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). She was named a Global Young Leader by the World Economic Forum and is a fellow of the African Leadership Initiative of the Aspen Institute.

Menker received a B.A. in Economics and African Studies at Mount Holyoke College and the London School of Economics and an M.B.A. from Columbia University.

He is currently Professor Emeritus, Cornell University and President of John Mellor Associates, Inc. a policy consulting firm. Prior to that he was founding Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute, Chief Economist of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID/Washington,) and Vice-President of Abt Associates. At Cornell University he is now Professor Emeritus, and was Professor of Agricultural Economics, Economics, and Asian Studies, Director of the Comparative Economics Program and Associate Director and Acting Director of the Center for International Studies. He received degrees from Cornell University and Oxford University. He was the recipient of the Wihuri Prize (Finland) and the Presidential Award (The Reagan White House, USA) for efforts to alleviate hunger in the World and is an elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Agricultural Economics Association. He is the recipient of numerous awards for the quality of his research, the author and co-author of ten books, and hundreds of journal articles and conference papers (largely on economic and agricultural development.)