Authors

Ben Leyka is Chief Executive Officer of the African Agri Council NPC. He has worked with global stakeholders, including the Pan-African Parliament, the crowdfunding platform Capital Surge Inc and the investment company Equitics. Ben sits on various Board Committees and is also involved with the Africa 1st Initiative and DRC Invest.

Dr David Laborde Debucquet joined the International Food Policy Research Institue (IFPRI) in Washington DC in 2007 as a Senior Research Fellow in the Markets, Trade and Institutions Department and Theme Leader for Macroeconomics and Trade. He conducts research on globalisation, international trade, measurement and modelling of protectionism, multilateral and regional trade liberalisation, and environmental issues (climate change, biofuels).

Dr Lawrence Haddad is GAIN’s Executive Director since 2016. Today, Lawrence chairs Action Track 1 of the United Nations Food Systems Summit and is the co-convener of the Standing Together for Nutrition. Prior to GAIN, Lawrence was lead author of the Global Nutrition Report, Director of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), and Director of the Food Consumption and Nutrition Division at IFPRI. He is the winner of the 2018 World Food Prize Foundation award together with David Nabarro. Click here for more.

Jann Lay is head of the research focus "Growth and Development" at the GIGA Leipniz Institute for Global and Regional Studies in Hamburg. As an adjunct professor, he teaches development economics at the University of Göttingen. In his research he examines various aspects of economic development in the Global South with a focus on Africa.

Ms. Burbano de Lara is WFP’s world expert in school feeding and a member of the Technical Committee for School Feeding of the Partnership for Child Development at the Imperial College in London. In this capacity, she has advised the governments of China, Colombia and Kenya, Ghana, among others, often in partnership with the World Bank. During her 14 years of experience with WFP, Carmen Burbano de Lara has specialized in supporting governments to strengthen their national social protection and safety net policies and programmes and to tackle malnutrition and food insecurity.

Since mid 2018 Sebastian Lesch has been head of the Agriculture Department of the BMZ, which is responsible for a wide range of topics from agricultural trade and global agricultural supply chains such as soya, palm oil, cocoa or coffee, for the Common European Agricultural Policy to concrete innovation in our project work with a wide range of partners worldwide.