Dr. Adesina: My Personal Story

Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, Nigeria's Minister for Agriculture

Pictured: Google Search

For me, poverty is not about statistics- it is not an abstract theory- it was my childhood reality. My village school, where we had no electricity for most of the time, and no running water was where I learnt how to survive. My classmates were children of farmers, attending school when the farm harvest was good and, unable to pay school fees, dropping out when harvests suffered.

I come from a long line of farmers.  My grandfather owned a farm, but could not afford to send my father to school. Sometimes both of them worked as laborers on other people's farms, for less than 10 cents per day - enough to avoid hunger, and hope to God for another day.

Troubled and distressed by his inability to read at the age of 14 years, my father's prayers were answered when an uncle from the city took him in and he started school.  Father learned quickly but had to give up his dream of university education to take care of his siblings. While working minimum wage at the Lagos port, he was presented with the opportunity to hide inside the cargo hull of a ship bound for London- to stow away like many of his peers in order to seek his fortune in Europe. The thought of leaving his aged mother alone kept him from making the voyage.

 With his modest education he joined public service, working his way up while his young family lived in one room. As he moved up the ladder, we moved to a one-bedroom apartment - a luxury, as my siblings and I could now stretch ourselves out on the straw mat. As Dad passed difficult promotion examinations, he finally got a break. Becoming a government auditor, his better income allowed us to move into our own modest home. We had finally arrived! However, I have not forgotten the lessons of my youth or my father’s struggles.

 Sadly, for hundreds of millions of people across Africa, poverty is still an unchanging reality. Africa is growing, but it is still the world's poorest continent. We have oceans of poverty, with islands of wealth. Joblessness and a sense of hopelessness drive many young people to escape via any available means, cramped in trucks or the cargo holds of ships, or to brave dehydrating heat as they trek across the desert, hoping to escape poverty and misery. Without quality jobs or education, unemployed youths with nowhere to go and nothing to do are easy prey for extreme ideologies and criminal recruiters.

This must change. We must create hope for our young people. Africa must become the place to be, not the place to move away from.  For this new Africa, we must recognize and appreciate our remarkable gains, reflect on our emerging challenges and boost our strategic approach and investments to ensure that the new Africa emerges.

I have dedicated my entire life to finding solutions that will help lift the poor out of poverty, create wealth and provide hope for all of Africa. It is this passion to change the lives of hundreds of millions of people that drives me to seek the presidency of the African Development Bank.