ADESHINA ELECTED AfDB PRESIDENT

Akinwunmi Adesina, Nigeria’s minister for agriculture and rural development, has been elected the eighth president of the African Development Bank (AfDB).

He defeated seven other candidates in a keenly-contested election, which lasted more than four hours.
He will take over from Rwandan Donald Kaberuka, whose tenure expires on September 01, 2015.
Samura M.W Kamara from Sierra Leone was out of the race in the very first round, followed by Ethiopia’s Sufian Ahmed and Birama Boubacar Sidibe from Mali in the second and third round, respectively.
Tunisian Jaloul Ayed was eliminated in the fourth round, while Zimbabwean Thomas Sakala lost out in the fifth round.
This left Kordjé Bedoumra from Chad and Cristina Duarte from Cape Verde to slug it out with Adesina in the last round of the election, which itself lasted almost two hours, leading to tension as the result was being expected.
At the end, Adesina garnered 58.10 per cent of the total votes and 60.50 per cent regional votes to emerge president, while his closest rival, Bedoumra pulled 31.62 per cent of the total votes with 36.63 per cent regional votes. In distant third was the Duarte with 10.27 per cent of the total votes and 2.87 per cent regional votes.
Adesina’s nomination was confirmed on February 11, 2015 by the steering committee of the board of governors of the bank, while he received the support of Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s president-elect, who even detailed former vice-president, Atiku Abubakar, to meet President Jacob Zuma of South Africa, to support the agric minister’s candidature.
The election was decided by votes from African and non-African countries with a stake in the bank, with Nigeria having the largest voting power with 9.2 percent.
Adesina, 55, holds a bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Economics from the University of Ife (Obafemi Awolowo University) and a PhD in Agricultural Economics from Purdue University.
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. He is at present an associate director for food security. In July 2007, he was awarded the YARA Prize for the African Green Revolution in Oslo.
In 2008, Purdue University’s College of Agriculture gave him its Distinguished Agricultural Alumni Award. In 2010, he was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters by Franklin and Marshall College.