In the News

Africa: Invest in Small Farmers, Says IFAD Chief

Published on allAfrica.com: August 4, 2009

INTERVIEW

Kanayo F. Nwanze, president of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), recently spoke with AllAfrica about the future of international assistance and the role of agriculture in Africa's development. IFAD aims to eradicate rural poverty in developing countries by increasing access to financial services, markets, technology, land and other natural resources.

Having grown up in Nigeria, do you have any specific memories of how you saw foreign aid being effective or ineffective? How might this experience have shaped the direction you took in the development field, or now at IFAD?

I was a beneficiary of development assistance from the Ford Foundation, which supported my post-graduate studies in the United States where I got my advanced degrees in agricultural biology.

I think coming from a background where I had uncles who were small farmers, I certainly saw my potential role in working with farmers, and agriculture was the line that I decided to take. So in a sense the Ford Foundation grant [made it] clear to me that well-targeted assistance to developing countries — human resource development, capacity building, helping the countries themselves to grow their own potential change agents — was certainly the way to go. That in a sense shaped my own career path in agricultural development.

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