Outstanding Alumni Award 2024: Joseph DeVries PhD '95

Bio

Joe DeVries has been at the forefront of agricultural development in Africa for more than 35 years. In the 1980s he built irrigation schemes in the drought-ravaged Sahel. In the 1990s he designed and led agricultural recovery initiatives in Mozambique, Angola, Rwanda, Liberia, Sudan and numerous other countries. 

He earned a Ph.D. in plant breeding and genetics at Cornell University in 1995. In 1997, he joined The Rockefeller Foundation and turned his focus to crop genetic improvement and localized seed supply systems as a sustainable solution to hunger and low crop productivity among smallholder farmers. In 2006, DeVries co-founded the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, designing and then leading AGRA’s flagship initiative, the $300 million “Program for Africa’s Seed Systems”. AGRA/PASS helped African crop breeders to develop more than 700 new crop varieties.  By 2017, 114 private African seed companies established with AGRA/PASS support were producing 143,000 MT of certified seed annually, serving the needs of approximately 15 million smallholder farmers. 

During this period, DeVries led diverse teams in the creation of many ground-breaking initiatives, including the investment funds Pearl Capital, Injaro Agricultural Capital, and the African Seed Investment Fund, as well as the African Center for Crop Improvement at the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal, the West African Center for Crop Improvement at the University of Ghana and the Seed Enterprise Management Institute at the University of Nairobi.

In 2019, over concern for the millions of farmers who still lack access to improved seed and other technologies in Africa, he established Seed Systems Group (SSG), which focuses on developing seed supply systems in countries typically overlooked by donor institutions.  To date, SSG has raised and deployed more than $20 million toward this mission, and implements field-based initiatives in 15 countries from its offices in Nairobi, Kenya and Lomé, Togo.