How I Survived With $150 In 6 Months—AfDB’s President, Adesina Recounts Experience As US Varsity Student

The President of the African Development Bank, Akinwunmi Adesina has recounted how he had to survive for six months with $150 when his scholarship from Nigeria was not paid.

The AfDB boss told the story during his Commencement Address to the Class of 2023 at Calvin University, Michigan, USA.

Adesina said he had felt the pain of having to improvise because he could not afford basic needs.

First, Adesina narrated how he arrived as a foreign graduate student at Purdue University with only $750 and his rent for the six months was $100 per month.

Adesina said, “As a foreign graduate student at Purdue University. I arrived in America in 1983 with only $750. My scholarship from my home country was not paid. I was stuck in America. I had to survive on $750 for six months. Yes, you heard me right: six months! Of this, my rent was $100 a month, leaving me with $150 with which to survive. Each day, I walked several kilometers to school in the bitter cold and snow of Lafayette, Indiana, because I could not afford bus fares. Neither could I afford basic things. I had to improvise.

“Everything was about ‘value for money.’ If you economize, you are an economist, you don’t buy donuts because the middle is hollow, you don’t buy crisps because the can is half air, the day you find that out in the store you ask for a refund.

“Why pay for air when it is free? Eventually, I came down to my last 25 cents in the world. As I approached the bus on that bitterly cold day, I put my 25 cents in the till. The bus driver said, ‘that’ll be 50 cents please.’ I told him that’s all the money I had. Kindly, he put his hands in his wallet and paid the balance of 25 cents. “

But Adesina’s turning point came after he had exhausted the money and a campus professor, Dr. John Connors took up the challenge to help him.

After being given $100 by Connors, the professor further linked him with professor, Dr. John Sanders for his PhD studies.

Recounting how kindness can reshape a man’s destiny, he said both professors paid for his tuition fees and gave him stipend.

“That same day on getting to campus one of my professors, Dr. John Connors, called me in. I let him know my situation. He gave me $100 and said, ‘you can pay me back in 5 years after you finish your PhD studies. But Dr. Connors did more.

“He helped me get an assistantship with another professor, Dr. Phil Abbott, for my master’s degree, and then with another professor, Dr. John Sanders for my PhD degree, who both paid for my tuition and provided me with decent stipends,” said Adesina.

The AfDB president said the investment of both professors in him paid off years after.

He said, “Their trust and investment in me paid off. Many years after, I went on to win the World Food Prize – known as the ‘Nobel Prize for Agriculture’. How could my professors have known at the time that they were helping someone who would later become a World Food Prize Laureate?

“How would they have known they were helping someone who would later become President of the African Development Bank Group? Yes, the African Development Bank Group that was ranked last year by Global Finance as the Best multilateral financial institution in the world? How could they have known that this skinny kid would go on to manage not 25 cents but $208 billion?”