Consistent Strides: Akinwumi Adesina Bags The Gambian Highest National Honour

By Eric Elezuo

For Nigerian-born President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Akinwumi Adesina, excellence and eye-on-the-job have remained a hallmark that must not be compromised. And so year in and year out the former Minister of Agriculture under the Goodluck Jonathan-led administration of 2010 to 2015, has continued to deliver firsts in his capacity as the leader of the world body, as an African and as a proud Nigerian.

Akinwum’s latest cap of feathers is his recent honour handed down by the president of The Gambia, Adama Barrow, who bestowed on him the highest national honour of the country, the Grand Commander of the Order of the Republic of The Gambia.

The honour, The Boss Newspaper learnt, is in recognition of Adesina’s leadership role and contributions to development in The Gambia in particular, and Africa at large.

President Barrow bestowed him with the honour during a ceremony held in Soma during the week while the recipient was on an official visit to the West African nation. The visit was the first by an African Development Bank president since The Gambia joined the Bank Group nearly 50 years ago.

An official citation rendered during the conferment of honour recognised Adesina’s leadership role in increasing the Bank’s share capital from $93 billion to $208 billion in 2019, the highest in the Bank’s history since its inception in 1964; financial innovations; enhancing the Bank’s effectiveness and impact; his innovative and transformational policies as Nigeria’s former Minister of Agriculture, including the introduction of an electronic wallet for farmers and the effective ending of corruption in the country’s fertiliser sector.

The citation further noted that in 2022, the African Development Bank was ranked the Best Multilateral Financial Institution in the world by Global Finance; and the Most Transparent Financial Institution in the world by ‘Publish What You Fund,’ for its sovereign operations. Thanks to the effective leadership style of Adesina.

Also under Adesina’s leadership, the Bank convened the 2023 Feed Africa Summit which brought together 34 Heads of State and Government, development partners, global and regional private sector players, and farmers for transformative actions for food self-sufficiency in Africa. The summit, co-hosted by the Senegalese government, mobilized more than $70 billion to date.

While receiving the honour, Adesina noted as follows: “Sometimes, I wonder what I have done to deserve such an award. The honour you have bestowed on me is not just personal. It reflects the long partnership that the Bank has had with The Gambia.”

“My life is useful only to the extent that it helps improve the lives of others. Nothing more,” Mr Adesina told The Gambian government, “The African Development Bank will stand beside you, be around you, and support you strongly, and we will continue to see the fruits of our marriage.”

Among a plethora of achievements, Adesina is a 2017 World Food Prize Laureate, who had worked as a rice researcher in The Gambia. He promised that the Bank would support the country in its ambition to become self-sufficient in rice.

Consequently, the Bank Group under Adesina, has committed $32.4 million to an ongoing programme to boost rice value chains, aiming to produce 200,000 additional tonnes of paddy rice by 2028 and reduce imports to zero.

Also in recent years, Adesina’s African Development Bank Group has funded several projects in The Gambia, including the modernisation of the Banjul Port, the construction of the Senegambia Bridge that connects the country with Senegal, agricultural transformation, climate change mitigation, social protection and energy sector development.

All in all the AfDB has invested $540 million in The Gambia since it joined the institution in 1974.

Adesina needs no introduction in the finance and agriculturalworld. He is the second term President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), and arguably Nigeria’s best performing Minister of Agriculture till date. He is one man whose name not only ring a bell among the people of the world, with special emphasis to Nigeria, he is a source of succour, hope and encouragement. In fact, his antecedents in public service speak volumes.

In addition to Adesina’s many firsts, the pan African President of AfDB, who went through thick and thin to conquer imperialism and retained his office, was not long ago on news front burner when he against all odds took his stand with the citizens of Nigeria to caution the former President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government of Nigeria against excessive taxation on the population, whom he justifiably described as the ones providing the amenities in the country.

Without mincing words, he told the Federal Government pointblank to pull the brake on tax increment, saying that it will be double jeopardy to over tax citizens who provide basic amenities the government has failed to offer. The government actually needed a shock absorber to take that in. He took his premise on the fact that every Nigerian home is responsible for his own water with self dug borehole, electricity with private power generators and in more cases than one, provides his road network, communication enhancement equipment as well as amusement facilities.

He said the fact that Nigeria taxes are relatively lower cannot be justification for incessant tax raise.

Adesina’s advice came in the heat of a lecture he delivered at the annual conference of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) in Abuja.

He said: “Low tax to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) rate in the country is not an excuse for the Federal Government to keep increasing taxes.

“While other countries with high tax rates have functional free education and free health care system among others, such cannot be said for Nigeria.”

“In Nigeria, the inefficient system has imposed an implicit tax on the Nigerians as the people are made to provide basic essential facilities that should have been made available by government.”

Adesina’s overriding influence in the field of placing humanity first, took centre stage when he was appointed Minister of Agriculture by the administration of the then President Goodluck Jonathan. He left office in 2015, and immediately clinched the presidency of AfDB. Since then, Adesina has not looked back working for the growth and development of Nigeria and Nigerians in particular, and Africans in general.

BRIEF BACKGROUND OF AKINWUMI ADESINA

Adesina was born to a Nigerian farmer in Ibadan, Oyo State, on February 6, 1960. He attended a village school and graduated with a Bachelors in Agricultural Economics with First Class Honors from the University of Ife, Nigeria in 1981. He was basically the first student to be awarded this distinction by the university. He followed up his studies at Purdue University in Indiana, briefly returning to Nigeria in 1984 to get married.

Afterwards, he returned to school, obtaining his PhD (Agricultural Economics) in 1988 from Purdue, winning the Outstanding Ph.D Thesis for his research work in the bargain.

Adesina’s professional career kicked off proper in 1990, when he served as a Senior Economist at West African Rice Development Association (WARDA) in Bouaké, Ivory Coast. He served till 1995.

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. And from 2003 until 2008, he was an Associate Director for food security.

In 2010, he was appointed Nigerian Agriculture Minister, a post he held till 2015 when the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan ended.

Adesina was named as Forbes African Man of the Year for his reform of Nigerian agriculture. He introduced more transparency into the fertiliser supply chain. He also said that he would give away mobile phones to farmers but this proved too difficult as a result of lack of mobile network in rural areas.

In 2010, United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon appointed him as one of 17 global leaders to spearhead the Millennium Development Goals.

On May 28, 2015, just before he completed his tenure as the Nigerian Minister of Agriculture, a position he had held for four years, Adesina was elected the presumptive President of the African Development Bank. He began his tenure of the office on September 1 2015. He is the eighth president in the organization’s history, and the first Nigerian to hold the post.

On resumption at the AfDB, He launched a strategy based on energy, agriculture, industrialization, regional integration and bettering Africans’ lives. The Board of Executive Directors approved the reorganization of the structure around these five priorities.

In September 2016, Adesina was appointed by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to serve as member of the Lead Group of the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement.[10]

In 2017, he was awarded 2017 World Food Prize. Upon receiving the prize on October 21, 2017. Adesina donated the $250,000 he received to the development of African youth in agriculture. That is how generous and benevolent he is.

Adesina is not all work; he is reportedly very close to his God. While at Purdue University, he, his wife, along with another couple, started a Christian group called the African Student Fellowship. He and his wife Grace have two children, Rotimi and Segun.

As an Agricultural Economist, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina has been a leader in agricultural innovation for over 30 years. He has contributed greatly to food security in Africa, aimed at improving the lives of millions currently living in poverty, throughout the African continent. The Sunhak Committee acknowledges Dr. Akinwumi Adesina’s achievements in promoting Good Governance of Africa, which boosts Africa’s capacity to feed itself and transform its total economies for generating wealth for millions of rural and poor African farmers.

At the Cape Town International Convention Center, the Sunhak Peace Prize Committee announced him as a co-winner of the 2019 Laureates for the Sunhak Peace Prize, the other person was Waris Dirie, 53 year-old world-class supermodel and anti-FGM activist.

Dr. Akinwumi Adesina has been a leader in agricultural innovation in Africa for over 30 years, bringing great improvement to Africa’s food security. contributing to Africa’s dynamic growth. His leadership is building stepping-stones for Africa’s dynamic growth.

Chairman of the Sunhak Peace Prize Committee, Dr. Il Sik Hong, stated that “the Sunhak Peace Prize was established based upon the vision of “One Family Under God.” The 2019 Sunhak Peace Prize gives special attention to peace and human development in Africa.”

Dr. Akinwumi Adesina pioneered major transformations in the agricultural field, including expanding rice production by introducing high yielding technologies, designing and implementing policies to support farmers’ access to technologies at scale, increasing the availability of credit for millions of smallholder farmers, attracting private investments for the agricultural sector, rooting out the corrupt elements in the fertilizer industry, and assisting in establishment of major agricultural policies for Africa’s green revolution.

The “Africa Fertilizer Summit,” which he organized in 2006, was one of the largest high-level meetings in Africa’s history that had a focus on solving Africa’s food issues. During this Summit, Dr. Adesina was instrumental in developing the “Abuja Declaration on Fertilizer for the African Green Revolution,” whereby the participants stated their commitment to the “eradication of hunger in Africa, by 2030.”

Dr. Adesina worked with various banks and international NGOs in order to create an innovative financing system, providing loans to small farmers, providing a way for them to rise out of poverty. This move leveraged $100 million in loans and provided opportunities for small farmers to increase their agricultural productivity, and their income.

Dr. Akinwumi Adesina currently serves as the president of the African Development Bank Group which plays a central role in Africa’s development. As an “economic commander” of Africa, he promotes the “High 5 Strategy” that include: light up and power Africa, feed Africa, industrialize Africa, integrate Africa and improve the quality of life for the people of Africa. As a result of his work, the lives of millions of people throughout Africa have been improved.

He was instrumental in gathering no fewer than 200 leading African political, business, and diplomatic leaders in Johannesburg for the 8th African Leadership Magazine Persons of the Year Award dinner. He was the cynosure of all eyes. Adesina’s achievements shone like a million stars as he was named and honored as the African of the Year 2019, the most popular vote-based third-party endorsement in Africa.

The event which was themed ‘Africa for Africans – Exploring the Gains of a Connected Continent’, brought together dignitaries including South African Deputy President, David D Mabuza, South AfricanMinisters Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma and Lindiwe Zulu, and Dr. Ken Giami, Publisher of African Leadership Magazine.

In the keynote speech he delivered on the night, Adesina’s passion for the continent was seen as palpable, connecting with the attentive audience. Much as he deserved the honour by every standard, he nonetheless expressed deep humility in being recognised, clasifying his giant strides as ‘modest achievements and contributions to Africa’.

“Humbled to be nominated by what I gather to be 60% of the votes cast by some 1 million people, humbled to be at the helm of an organisation that is making a tremendous difference across Africa – the African Development Bank. An organisation that is daily making prosperity a reality,” he said.

He dedicated the award to his wife, Grace, the Board, staff, and colleagues at the bank, his mother, and “to the young mothers, struggling to bring up a child, to the farmer in search of a better tomorrow, to the youth of Africa longing for a better future, and to Africa’s journalists who risk their lives in helping to tell Africa’s true story.”

Seen as the visionary behind the African Development Bank’s High 5 strategy, he noted that the primary focus of the African Development Bank is “to light up and power Africa, to feed Africa, to industrialise Africa, to integrate Africa, and to improve the quality of life of the people of Africa. Five simple, strategic, and highly focused objectives.” The truth is he has never reneged in achieving the feats.

The African Leadership Magazine Persons of the Year Awards is now the most popular vote-based third-party endorsement in Africa.

In May 2021, he was honoured with a doctorate degree by the prestigious Makerere University, an effort that formed additional feather to a crown full of distinguished feathers.

We join the the world to celebrate your legacy of achievements and wish you many more years of service to humanity.