Dr. Kalibata has served as the President of AGRA since 2014, where she leads the organization’s efforts with public and private partners to ensure a food secure and prosperous Africa through inclusive, sustainable agricultural growth, improving the productivity and livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers in Africa.

From 2019-2021, Dr. Kalibata also served as the Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for the 2021 Food Systems Summit, a catalytic process at the start of the Decade of Action to improve food systems around the world to deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Paris Agreement.

Prior to joining AGRA, Dr. Kalibata was Rwanda’s Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources (MINAGRI) from 2008 to 2014, where she drove programs that moved her country from a food insecure to a food secure status and became a reference point for other countries that sought to deliver agriculture transformation.

Dr. Kalibata also sits on various boards, councils and commissions including the Global Commission on Adaptation, the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, the Global Panel for Agriculture & Food Systems for Nutrition, the Global Agriculture & Food Security Program (GAFSP), the Food Systems Stewardship Board of the World Economic Forum, the Malabo-Montpellier Panel, the Architecture for REDD+ Transactions and the Global Commission on Climate Overshoot, the Advisory Committee of the Presidnecy of CoP28, among others.

Dr. Kalibata has a distinguished track record as an agricultural scientist, policy maker and thought leader, and sheholds a doctorate in Entomology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is recipient of many prestigious awards including but not limited to the Yara Prize, now the Africa Food Prize, in 2012, an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Liège in 2018,  an Honorary Doctorate from McGill University in 2019, and the National Academy of Sciences’ Public Welfare Medal in April, 2019 for her work to drive Africa’s agricultural transformation through modern sciences and effective policy thereby improving livelihoods of smallholder farmers. In 2022, she received an Awarded from World Farmers Organization recognizing her leadership in mobilizing farmers’contribution to the Food Systems Summit an the same year also received the Planetary Health Award through the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation.