Adesina’s World Food Prize Money Sprouts To $600,000

Two donors have augmented the $250,000 World Food prize money of President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Akinwumi Adesina, to $600,000.

This follows Adesina’s decision to dedicate the said cash prize, which he received as winner of the 2017 World Food Prize (WFP) Laureate award, to set up a fund for financing African youths in agriculture.

The World Food Prize Africa Institute will be jointly set up by the former Nigerian Minister of Agriculture and the World Food Prize Foundation.

“The World Food Prize-Africa Institute will support young agripreneurs, whom we will call Borlaug-Adesina Fellows. This will allow us to strategically continue Dr. Norman Borlaug’s legacy of taking agricultural technologies to the farmers, and my philosophy of promoting and engaging agriculture as a business,” Adesina announced when he delivered the Laureate Address at a Luncheon during the World Food Prize-Borlaug Dialogue Symposium.

“The Youth of Africa are the future of the continent and to them I pledge my support.”

The prize money was sprouted to $600,000 by John M. Harrington III of Sheffield Corporation who donated $250,000 and John Ruan III, Chairman of the World Food Prize Foundation, who pledged US $100,000.

Adesina, in his speech titled “Africa’s pathway out of poverty” praised John M. Harrington III and John Ruan III for their donations.

He said educated African youths “will take agriculture as a business. They will make agriculture ‘cool’. I fully expect the future millionaires and billionaires of Africa to come from agriculture.”

“This is my story. My father and grandfather were farmers, and became so poor farming they had to work as part-time labourers on other people’s farms. My father told me that farming did not pay. It was through a benefactor that he made it out of the village to get the benefit of education,” Adesina said.

“It was that golden opportunity, with a lot of sacrifices that gave me the benefit of an education and today, by God’s grace, has given me an incredible opportunity to stand on the global stage to receive the World Food Prize.”

On his motivation to feed Africa, Adesina called it a mission. Like Paul in the Bible, he said, “I also hear the voices rising out of rural Africa, saying, ‘Come here and help us get out of poverty.’ This ‘agriculture gospel’ was first preached by Dr. Norman Borlaug, the Nobel Peace Prize-winner, who created the World Food Prize, for he heard the voices of a billion people and, through his dedicated work, delivered a green revolution across Asia that fed a billion people.”