Jean Pierre Nereyabagabo

I am a senior humanitarian, food systems and rural development executive with over 30 years of international leadership across 19 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Sahel, the Middle East, Southern Africa and South Asia. My career spans senior technical and executive leadership roles with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) — 21 years in successive senior Economic Security Coordinator positions — the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and World Vision International (WVI), directing multi-million-dollar Economic Security and Food Security portfolios that reached millions of people, including more than 850,000 beneficiaries in Mali, 260,000 in Yemen and 120,000 in Sudan, in some of the world's most complex, conflict-affected and insecure operating environments where access, neutrality and operational risk demand exceptional judgement.

I combine deep technical expertise — food and nutrition security, agriculture, livestock and agropastoral development, transboundary animal disease management, market systems development, livelihoods and economic recovery, cash and voucher assistance, resilience programming, climate-smart agriculture, disaster risk reduction and humanitarian-development-peace nexus programming — with strong analytical capability in market assessments, vulnerability analysis and independent programme evaluation. Uniquely, I combine agricultural science with engineering experience designing and supervising irrigation schemes, dams, canals and marshland development across multiple countries. I have authored or led more than 70 strategic assessments, evaluations, baseline studies and rapid needs/market assessments, and have pioneered innovative rural and agricultural finance mechanisms — cereal banks, fodder banks, revolving credit, and a humanitarian-to-development transition model co-designed with the Grameen Foundation and Crédit Agricole du Niger — that expanded access to credit and rebuilt rural economies for hundreds of thousands of households and producers.

As a senior executive, I have led multidisciplinary and multicultural teams of up to 27 international and national staff with full accountability for programme strategy, operational delivery, financial stewardship, donor engagement, compliance, and monitoring and evaluation. I have represented organizations before Ministries of Agriculture, Livestock, Environment and Rural Development, and negotiated strategic partnerships with FAO, WFP, IFAD, UNICEF, UNDP, the World Bank, AfDB, the EU, USAID, DG ECHO, FCDO, AFD, ECOWAS/CEDEAO, CILSS and PRAPS. I bring a thorough command of EU/EC cooperation procedures, logical frameworks and results-based reporting, and served as Regional Climate Change and Adaptation Lead for the Sahel, West and Central Africa, integrating climate risk management into humanitarian and development operations.

I have also served as Lecturer and Research Supervisor at the University of Rwanda and the Catholic University of Graben (DRC), and have delivered over 100 professional training programmes and executive workshops across Africa and Asia. Fluent in French and English, with working knowledge of Chinese and Kinyarwanda, I am recognized for building consensus among diverse stakeholders across multicultural environments — combining executive leadership, technical excellence and strategic vision to help governments and international organizations respond to emergencies, strengthen food systems, build climate resilience and improve livelihoods for vulnerable populations at scale.