Letter from the 2016-18 President of AAAPD
Dear AAAPD members, partners and friends,
I would like to start by thanking you for your continued
support and partnership with the Association of Agricultural Professionals in
the Diaspora (AAAPD), since our official launch in 2008. It is your continued support and good
partnership, coupled with a very devoted Board of Directors, that has ensured
that our association continues to grow and experience success during the past 8
years, as we pursue our vision of "Transforming African smallholder
agriculture through resource mobilization, intermediate technology intervention,
information dissemination, and networking”. I am very honored to serve as the President
for this new term starting Jan 2016.
The legacy of AAAPD began in 2006 when the Founding Board
Members saw the need to form this association to act as a catalyst for
agricultural development in Africa by tapping into the expertise of Africans in
the diaspora. Our 1st
President (2008-2011), Dr. Peter Jeranyama had a mammoth task to lead AAAPD
from its inception to a point where we became known across Africa, USA, and Canada.
Dr. Jeranyama is also a fulltime professor at Massachusetts University. Through
his leadership we successfully received funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation to get established, build our website (http://www.aaapd-africa.org/), and develop
a database of African agricultural professionals based in the diaspora,
capturing their areas of expertise which provide a resource for organizations/ institutes/private
companies/individuals who access it for various purposes related to
agricultural development in Africa. Currently, our database has over 2000
professional members with expertise ranging from Agronomy/Crop Sciences, Soil
sciences, Animal sciences (Nutrition, Breeding, Health), Agricultural and
Resource Economics/Policy, Agribusiness, and Biotechnology. These areas of
expertise can be easily transferred to benefit Africa. Besides this, the
association successfully engaged with various leading agricultural organizations
and institutes based in Africa. This led to the establishment of partnerships and
linkages between African diaspora and organizations such as RUFORUM, FARA, AU/NEPAD,
AGRA, and several African Universities.
From 2012-15 we had our 2nd President
(Prof Andrew Manu, Iowa State University) building the association further by
expanding into Europe in 2012, where our new Branch was launched led by Dr.
Linley Chiwona-Karltun based at the Swedish University of Agricultural
Sciences, Uppsala, Sweden. In 2014,
AAAPD and the sister branch in Europe hosted the first event in Sweden during
the biennial Nordic Days Conference. With one of our main objectives of facilitating
linkages between Western corporations/institutes/universities with similar
African institutes and universities, we have successfully hosted several events
at the World Food Prize conference held annually in Des Moines, Iowa, through
the generous support of Monsanto Company, Iowa State University and Michigan
State University. These events have provided a platform for various leaders
from Africa (Dr. Strive Masiyiwa-AGRA; Dr. Makinde-UN/NEPAD; Dr. Lindiwe M.
Sibanda-FANRPAN; Prof M. Rukuni-WALA etc.) to engage directly with potential
partners in the US agricultural industry that included executives from private
sector companies, donor community (Gates Foundation, USAID), and leaders from
various US Universities. In Canada, AAAPD
has continued to facilitate linkages and collaboration between African and Canadian
institutions in a number of themes supported by the International Development
Research Centre (IDRC, Ottawa) through various calls for proposals. In this
regard, AAAPD has worked with RUFORUM to expedite these partnerships in
response to IDRC initiatives, thereby continuing to support our shared goals
for capacity building in Africa. In
addition, several of our Board members have jointly developed curriculum with our
partners in Africa for agricultural courses to be offered at African
Universities, as well as facilitated study abroad programs for agricultural
students at Iowa State University to study for one semester in Ghana and South
Africa. Board members also participated in a NEPAD initiative to develop the
African Agricultural
Education and Skills Improvement Framework (AESIF).
As our association
continues to grow, it has become even more important for us to strengthen the
partnerships and linkages that we developed over the past 8 years. In this regard, I would like to recognize and
appreciate the contributions and strong leadership of my two predecessors. Although we are currently experiencing a
downward trend in the agricultural industry, with company mergers and cutbacks
in the private sector, and reduced donor funding opportunities for development
work, I would like to borrow a quote from Aristotle Onassis, “It is during our
darkest moments that we must focus to see the light”. The light for Africa is
its bountiful youth. Much of the future employment for the youth of Africa will
be related to agriculture, farming and agribusiness. During my term as
president of AAAPD, I would like to encourage all our members, partners, and
friends to stay focused on strengthening our efforts to promote agricultural
development in Africa because this has the greatest potential to ensure that the
world can produce enough food to feed the rapidly growing population that will
reach 10 billion by year 2050. Africa has the capacity to help feed the world,
if we can stay focused on transferring the best technologies available to
enable African farmers to maximize crop and livestock productivity.
We ask you all to join us and help to make 2016 -18 a great time
period for;
-
African farmers to benefit more from the various
advanced agricultural technologies available today,
-
African women farmers to be equipped with the
skills, technologies and enabling environment to reap the financial rewards for
their hard work in agriculture, while ensuring food security,
-
Providing quality training and skills
development for African youths on agri-prenuership covering production,
processing, value addition, and marketing that will ensure that our African
youth view farming as a profitable business and,
-
Supporting more graduate students taking Masters
and PhDs programs in Agricultural subjects (Agronomy, Biotechnology, Plant
Breeding, Animal Breeding, Animal Nutrition, Agribusiness, etc.). This will
involve facilitating enrollment and funding of African students at Universities
in US, Canada and Europe where our AAAPD members can help as mentors and supervisors.
Please feel free to reach-out to me with any ideas/suggestions
as I welcome your input. My contact email address is: dianah.ngonyamo@gmail.com. We also invite you to visit our website
regularly, for updates and opportunity information for you and the continent of
Africa.
Thank You,
Sincerely,
Dr Dianah
Rumbidzai Ngonyama, PhD
AAAPD President
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Daniel Karanja (AAAPD Vice President, and Executive Director of the
Partnership to Eradicate Poverty & Hunger in Africa, Washington D.C.)
Dr. Peter Jeranyama (AAAPD Director for Africa Outreach, and Professor
at Massachusetts University)
Dr. Stephen Machado (AAAPD Director for Communication and Information,
and Professor at Oregon State University, USA)
Dr. Linley Chiwona-Karltun (AAAPD-Europe President, and Research
scientist at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Sweden)
Dr. Edmund Mupondwa (AAAPD Director for Canada Outreach, and Manager
for Central Agric Econs Administration, Canada)
Dr. Thandiwe Nleya (AAAPD Director for Gender Issues)
Dr. Samuel Essah (AAAPD Director for Finance, and Professor at Colorado
State University, USA)
Ngolia Kimanzu (AAAPD-Europe COO)
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