How the unimaginable can be achieved in African agribusiness

Perspectives in International Development Seminar Series: Spring 2021

The agri-food system of today will have to evolve to feed 10 billion people sustainably by 2050, and more beyond. What are the lessons from the past in exercising leadership and making bold bets that may guide us as we embark on creating the future? Where are some of the tradeoffs in transforming the agri-food sector for inclusive prosperity, and how confident should we be about inclusive agricultural transformation being a reality in Africa? This seminar will provide frameworks for understanding the technical and adaptive aspects of transforming food systems in Africa and hopefully answer the question: do we dare to achieve the unimaginable?

About the presenter

Dr. Debisi Araba is a public policy and strategy specialist and is a member of the Malabo Montpellier Panel, a group of international agriculture experts who guide policy choices that accelerate progress towards food security and improved nutrition in Africa. He has a Doctorate degree from the Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, where his research focused on designing frameworks for incorporating evidence-based research into environmental policy in developing countries, a Masters in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, a Masters in Clean Technology from the University of Newcastle Upon Tyne and a Bachelors degree in Physical Geography from the University of Ibadan.

Previously, Dr. Araba was the Africa Region Director at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, a member of the CGIAR, where he led strategy and business development in Africa. He also served as the Senior Manager, African policy engagement, with the CGIAR research program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security, CCAFS, where he worked on establishing and strengthening institutional partnerships and connecting and aligning CGIAR research output with the needs of the private sector. He has also served as the Technical Adviser on Environmental Policy to the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development in Nigeria, where he recently co-authored Nigeria’s National Agricultural Resilience Framework and led global and national partnerships in the development of climate-smart strategies for the agricultural sector.

About the seminar series

The "Perspectives in International Development Seminar Series" is co-sponsored by the Department of Global Development, the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management, and the School of Integrative Plant Science as part of courses IARD 6960, NTRES 6960, PLSCS 6960 and AEM 6960. For additional questions, contact course teaching assistant Khusel Avirmed at ta346 [at] cornell.edu (ta346[at]cornell[dot]edu).