Akinwumi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank, has been named the winner of 2017 World Food Prize.
President of the World Food Prize, Kenneth Quinn, made the annoucenment on Monday at a ceremony held at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, attended by Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue.
The $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.
“These individuals have been at the forefront of every major breakthrough in agriculture and food production in the last 30 years”, Quinn told AllAfrica.
He said Adesina was honoured for his role in organizing and making the African fertilizer summit; 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.
“All of his policies were very farmer friendly, and he became known as the ‘farmer’s minister’,” Quinn noted.
Reacting, Adesina told AllAfrica: “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”.
“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”.
Adesina added that 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”.
“But it’s such a great honour for that work to be recognized for the impact it’s having across the world”.
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