The present and the future belong to your generation, the president of the African Development Bank tells Calvin University’s graduating class in 2023 | African Development Bank

Akinwumi A. Adesina, president of the African Development Bank Group, has called on young university graduates to be agents of change in a world plagued by increasing socio-economic challenges.

Dr. Adesina delivered the keynote address at the commencement ceremony of Calvin University in America, telling the audience, which included 700 graduates, “The world faces many simultaneous challenges and promises a future of exciting and infinite possibilities, in which you have a part to play,” Foremost among these challenges are climate change, food insecurity and a lack of universal access to affordable health care, he added.

Adesina is the first international guest to address the university’s Commencement event. He shared with the graduates the difficult times and circumstances he endured as a college student at Purdue University, USA. During that period he ran out of his small stipend and often had to walk miles, endure the winter cold, to and from lectures. One day a bus driver came to his rescue by topping up his fare. He also attracted the sympathy of his professors, who rallied to pay for his tuition and maintenance.

Many years later, Adesina won the World Food Prize, the “Nobel Prize in Agriculture.” “How could my professors know at the time that they were helping someone who would later become a laureate of the World Food Prize?” reminisced the head of the African Development Bank. “How would they have known they were helping someone who would go on to become president of the African Development Bank Group?”

He said, “Today I see before me builders and fashioners of hope.” “You are well prepared to go out into the world to be the changemakers. You received a world-class education. You have been exposed to great ideas and you have collaborated with teachers and students from all over the world.”

Dr. Wiebe Boer, president of Calvin University, praised Adesina’s qualities as “a man of great achievement.” Dr. Farmer, referring to Adesina as his mentor.

Nain Miranda Duarte, the President of the Student Senate of Calvin University, talked about the economic hardship his family was going through and how he had benefited from people’s generosity from his early days in Nicaragua’s slums to graduating from an American college. top university. He said his parents’ combined income was just $50 a month at the time, which amounted to just $1.67 a day for a family of seven.

“Together we stand here today because of those who decided to be God’s hands and feet and who actively exemplified the power of generosity. Class of 2023, it’s my turn, it’s your turn, to be that anonymous donor who enables others to complete their high school education. It’s our turn to make impossible dreams come true,” said Duarte.

Adesina was first elected president of the African Development Bank Group in 2015 as the institution’s eighth head. Under his leadership, the bank achieved its highest capital raise in 2019. Last year, the African Development Bank Group and donor countries agreed to raise $8.9 billion from the African Development Fund (ADF), which provides concessional loans and grants to low-income income African countries. It was the highest replenishment in the ADF’s 50-year history. He served as Nigeria’s minister of agriculture and is credited with transforming the country’s agri-manufacturing sector in four years. In 2017, Adesina won the World Food Prize, in recognition of his work with the Rockefeller Foundation and Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.