AGRA

Yihenew Zewdie has 20 years of post-PhD professional experience at a senior level working in different international research and development organisations based in Africa and Europe in the spheres of development programme monitoring, knowledge management, and policy brokering in a wide range of themes, including resilience building, food security, agricultural science and technology partnerships, natural resource management, and agricultural value chains.

For over four years since the late 2010 Yihenew worked in diverse programme development and management capacities for the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) based in Ethiopia, where he supported the recognition of the pastoral livestock insurance agenda in Ethiopia’s evolving agricultural policy review processes and played a leading part in the mobilisation of resources for the expansion of ILRI’s operations in livestock insurance in Ethiopia and poultry research-for-development in Southeast Asia.

Before that Yihenew worked as a Senior Technical Advisor at the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) based in Wageningen, the Netherlands. Yihenew was responsible for designing and overseeing CTA’s flagship projects in Eastern Africa. Here, Yihenew initiated and/or strengthened working partnerships between CTA and a range of inter-governmental organisations (e.g., AU Commission, IGAD), umbrella private sector organisations, ILRI, and international NGOs.

For three years since 2010, Yihenew also served as a Policy Advisor at the (then) Department of Rural Economy and Agriculture (African Union Commission, AUC), where he was instrumental in catalysing Ethiopia’s engagement with the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP); advised countries in eastern Africa integrate sustainable land management issues in their respective agricultural and food security investment plans; and contributed directly to the preparation of guidelines and thought pieces on the design of CAADP-based country agricultural and food security investment plans

Before joining the AUC, Yihenew was a Task Leader for African agriculture at the Secretariat of the Global Donor Platform for Rural Development, based in Bonn, Germany. In this capacity, Yihenew played a lead role in the coordination of the Platform’s engagement with the African constituency within the framework of CAADP; and was instrumental in streamlining and operationalising the CAADP Partnership Platform and its Business Segment.

In between his time as an internationally recruited staff, Yihenew also successfully handled different consultancy assignments mainly with pan-African research and/or development institutions (e.g., FARA), CGIAR entities (e.g., CIAT, IFPRI, and ILRI), and the World Bank.

From the mid to late 2000s Yihenew served the UN World Food Programme in Ethiopia as a Programme Advisor and then as Head of a section entrusted with the responsibility of overseeing environmental rehabilitation and safety nets issues. In this capacity, Yihenew played a central role in informing the preparation and rolling out of Ethiopia’s multi-donor, multi-year, and multi-million-dollar Rural Productive Safety Net Programme.

In his earlier engagement with rural development organisations in Ethiopia, Yihenew acquired substantial hands-on experience in livelihoods-orientated programme implementation in different agricultural production systems of Ethiopia as well as in leading platforms established to inform joined-up actions in different agricultural development and resilience-building thematic areas.

For several years now Yihenew has also been providing voluntary leadership services to a couple of community-based organisations and local NGOs in Ethiopia. Yihenew is also Board member of a local private sector company and a global development organisation.

Yihenew holds a PhD degree in Environment and Development (UK), an MSc degree in Development Planning (Germany and Ghana), and a BA degree in Economics (Ethiopia).

Yihenew is married and has three children.