Nkechi Okoronkwo
8 March 2009
"I am excited, happy and fulfilled, proud and strengthened that Nigeria's personality, charisma and ego have been sufficiently demonstrated through the country's repositioning agenda."
These are the words of the Agriculture and Water Resources Minister, Dr Sayyadi Ruma, following the recent election of Nigeria's Dr Kanayo Nwanze as the fifth and first African President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
For analysts and many African stakeholders in the affairs of IFAD, nothing could have better boosted Nigeria's image in the international arena than for its citizen to occupy the top seat of the prestigious Rome-based UN agency. Established in 1977, IFAD is an important development partner that promotes sustainable agriculture and rural development for poverty reduction in the rural areas.
Although IFAD focuses mainly on the developing countries, more than 40 per cent of its financial allocation to the Western and Central African region is provided to Nigeria alone.
Analysts say it is against this background that the recent 32nd session of the IFAD Governing Council in Rome was particularly significant for Nigeria.
Besides occupying the Presidency, Nigeria is also the current Chairman of the organisation's Governing Council, the highest policy-making body of the agency, a position it will hold until 2010.
The election of Nwanze is the first time such exercise was conducted through a merit-based and transparent electoral process, allowing IFAD's members the opportunity to openly meet with the candidates.
The new approach was hailed by the 165-member organisation comprising the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and OPEC member countries as well as other developing nations as a transparent process for electing the best candidate for the job.
Observers say that Nwanze might have won the election at the open meeting held on Jan. 23, about a month after the close of nominations.
He had a last-minute frivolous allegation of mismanaging funds while he was the Director-General of the Cotonou-based African Rice Centre (WARDA), an inconsequential allegation that was ostensibly meant to discredit him.
Observers say that Nigeria's close neighbour, Niger Republic, played a spoiler role by sponsoring Dr Amadou Cisse even after the African Union had endorsed Nwanze as its candidate.
Nwanze won the first round of voting with a wide margin, having polled 52.5 per cent of the 2,800 votes, while his closest rival, Prof. Joachim von Braun of Germany secured 25.2 per cent of the ballots.
Cisse, with six per cent of the votes, placed a distant fourth behind India, which garnered seven per cent, while Israel picked up only one per cent of the votes.
Pakistan's Amb. Mirze Beg had withdrawn from the race a day earlier in favour of Nwanze. A graduate of the University of Ibadan, Nwanze's CV shows that he has more than 30 years of extensive experience in the improvement of the livelihood of poor rural communities.
Before joining IFAD, Nwanze had held several senior positions at various centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and served in several African and Asian countries, including 10 years in India.
For Ruma, Nwanze's election is significant in the sense that most of the votes came from the OECD member states, including Germany, These member states accounted for 48 per cent of the votes.
Sen. Tarwa Wada, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, says that Nwanze's election demonstrates that Nigeria is well respected in the international community, and reflects the country's financial contribution to the organisation.
"It shows that Nigeria has taken IFAD very seriously and, by extension, agriculture generally," Wada says.
But Rep. Gbenga Makanjuola, the Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Agriculture, says: "I believe that Niger Republic has been taught a lesson that as an African colleague and nation, when African leaders have spoken with one voice, no other African country should try to subvert or undermine the authority of African Union leaders.
"Nwanze's election is a victory for Africa. It is a victory for Nigeria; it is a victory for the Nigerian leadership in West Africa, sub-Saharan Africa and the African continent as a whole.
"It shows that our view is being respected. The whole of Africa gave us their total support without any conditionality. It is a victory for agricultural revolution in Africa, having elected one of our own."
The outgoing IFAD President Lennart Bage, a Swede, applauds the transparent merit-based election process, saying that it has "profoundly reformed" the organisation in the past eight years "We have developed results-based country strategies and programmes. We have expanded our country level presence. We have increased significantly our direct supervision of projects and programmes.
"We have improved our targeting, knowledge management and innovation capacity.
"The 2008 UN Global Staff Survey, completed by some 15,000 staff from 34 UN organisations, showed IFAD ranking second overall. We are, to sum up, a results-driven values-based organisation. And we are committed to continuous change and reform," Bage said in his speech at the Governing Council meeting.
IFAD was established as an outcome of the 1974 World Food Conference organised in response to the food crises of the early 1970s that affected Africa's Sahelian region.
It is a specialised UN agency and an international financial institution meant to fund agricultural development projects primarily in food production in developing countries.
For IFAD, food insecurity and famine are not due so much to failures in food production, but to structural problems relating to poverty because the majority of the poor population in the developing world is concentrated in rural areas.
As the only UN agency with an exclusive focus on rural poverty, IFAD's mission from inception is "enabling poor rural people to overcome poverty".
It is, therefore, committed to eradicating rural poverty in developing countries, including Nigeria.
As reflected in its Strategic Framework for 2007-2010, IFAD is committed to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), particularly in halving the proportion of hungry and extremely poor people by 2015.
Since its inception, IFAD claims to have invested 10.6 billion dollars in loans and grants in 796 projects and programmes to fight rural poverty in developing countries, which has benefited more than 330 million poor rural people.
With financing from partners, including multilateral, bilateral and other donors, IFAD's total investment is more than 27 billion dollars.
It is currently supporting some 200 ongoing programmes and projects with a total investment of 3.2 billion dollars.
Through low-interest loans and grants, IFAD works with governments to develop and finance programmes and projects that enable rural poor people to overcome poverty themselves.
Its major areas of activity include agricultural development, financial services, rural infrastructure, livestock, fisheries, capacity and institution building, storage, food processing, marketing, research, extension, training, as well as small and medium-scale enterprises development.
IFAD has financed eight programmes in Nigeria since 1985 with a total loan commitment of 144.3 million dollars. Its support to the Federal Government's poverty reduction programme focuses on facilitating economic and social development in the rural areas.
As Nwanze mounts the saddle on April 1, the challenge before him will be to turn around for good the fortunes of the estimated 500 million smallholders with families estimated at more than two billion people, representing one-third of humanity.
Nwanze faces the onerous task of steering the IFAD ship to the attainment of its goals.
This requires increased political attention and much greater investment in the whole agricultural value chain. The world is watching and waiting. (NANFeatures)
Sources: News Agency of Nigeria (NAN)
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