Dr. Aggrey Agumya is FARA’s new Executive Director

Dr Agumya has been closely associated with most of the significant achievements of FARA, wherein he has served at the Director level for half as long as he has been a staff of FARA.

The Board of Directors of the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa has announced the appointment of Dr Aggrey Agumya as the next Executive Director of FARA.

In a press released published at the close of FARA’s  31st Session of the Board of Directors held on March 1-3, 2023 at the Lancaster Hotel Accra, Ghana, the FARA Board Chairman, Dr. Alioune Fall, asserted: “On behalf of the FARA Board of Directors, I am honoured to present Dr Aggrey Agumya as the Executive Director-Designate as we await further details of the imminent leadership transition at the FARA Secretariat. We all wish Aggrey a fruitful tenure as he takes the institution to the next level.”

Effectively, Dr. Agumya replaces Dr. Yemi Akinbamijo, who has been the Executive Director for a 10-year term, which expires in June 2023.

The process to recruit FARA’s Executive Director was flagged off by the constitution of the Recruitment Advisory Committee (RAC) and endorsed by the Board of Directors at its 29th Ordinary Session with the competitive recruitment of a Search Firm that has meticulously facilitated the recruitment process.

Aggrey Agumya, a Ugandan national, will become the third Executive Director and Head of Mission of FARA coming after Monty P Jones and Yemi Akinbamijo. He will take over office in June during the FARA General Assembly.

An alumnus of the University of Melbourne, Aggrey holds a doctorate degree in Geo-Information Sciences. He comes to this exciting position at such a momentous period in the evolution of FARA. Dr Agumya has been a part of the FARA story for the last 17 years when he joined the Secretariat as a Programme Officer of the sub-Saharan Africa Challenge Programme (SSA-CP), a well-recognized continental Flagship programme of FARA.

Thereafter, he served in key programme and leadership positions in FARA, including as Technical Advisor to the two Executive Directors. In 2020, Aggrey was appointed as the Director of Research and Innovation at the Secretariat, where he also serves as the de facto Deputy Executive Director. It is noteworthy that Dr Agumya has been closely associated with most of the significant achievements of FARA, wherein he has served at the Director level for half as long as he has been a staff of FARA. Aggrey comes ready with an intimate understanding of the context, configurations, corporate philosophy and partnerships of the agriculture research and innovation institutions in Africa.

First published by FARA as: Dr Aggrey AGUMYA – Executive Director-Designate for FARA