Excellencies,
Distinguished Governors,
Ladies and gentlemen,

I am deeply honoured to be re-elected as President of IFAD for a second term. Thank you for the confidence you have placed in me.

I would like to give a special thanks to my country, Nigeria, and to my family whose support has allowed me to give full attention to IFAD. And a big thank you to the IFAD staff who make this such an inspiring place to work.

Let me assure you, I will continue to build on the accomplishments of the past four years:  to make IFAD a more effective, efficient and agile institution; to fulfil the commitments set out during the IFAD9 consultation; and to ensure that IFAD retains its position as the foremost institution working in smallholder agriculture and rural development.

I am delighted to have the opportunity to continue for a second term. But I am well aware of the responsibility that comes with this re-election.

We have said that we plan to enable 80 million rural people to emerge from poverty by 2015.

We can do it, and we shall do it.

I base my confidence on the ability and determination of IFAD staff, and in the changes IFAD has already undergone to make it a more effective institution -- a leader in best practice that has been singled out for its performance by many of the Member States present in this room today. 

As I said in my opening address, we now have a business model that will allow us to achieve more and to do it better.

The four pillars of our operations – financial, programme, strategy and knowledge management, and corporate services – are now firmly in place.

We have expanded our country presence and increased our participation in policy dialogue. Our business model includes a greater emphasis on women. I am pleased to say that the projects we fund are now giving more support to women’s organizations, and that today women make up close to half of all IFAD project participants. 

But we still have some fine-tuning to do. Over the next four years, I promise to finish the job we have started.

We will continue to refine our work in direct supervision and implementation support.

On the human resources front, we have made a good start with reform. We have a more robust and transparent recruitment process.

A better gender balance was one of our goals, and we have made great progress. As a result, today 41% of all senior managers at the director level are women, compared with 21% in 2010.  Similar trends can be seen among professional staff.  But there is work ahead to fully modernize our HR management system. This includes taking staff issues, including staff morale and conditions of service, seriously.

We also have more work to do to improve our business processes and our accountability framework, as has been noted by evaluations. Here at headquarters, and in our country offices, we will continue to enhance our efficiency so that our money goes directly where it can make an impact.   

Collecting more data and measuring results is also part of our longer-term plan. In the coming years we plan to improve the assessment of IFAD’s impact so that we can ensure that the work we are doing is on the right track.

To reach our agreed goal of enabling 80 million women, men and children to move out of poverty, we will also need to scale up our operations in partnership with other stakeholders including our Rome-based sister agencies, governments, NGOs and donors.

We have already made great strides working with FAO and WFP in policy processes  as well as in the field.  And I plan to continue working with José Graziano da Silva and Ertharin Cousin to enhance Rome’s status as the global hub for agriculture, food and nutrition security.

I will also continue to support IFAD’s involvement in policy dialogue so that the Fund can have a greater impact, both at the national and global level.

Most of all, I will continue to strengthen the bonds with you, our Member States, ensuring that IFAD remains an institution that meets your needs, whether as a contributor or as a borrower. This includes exploring new and innovative financing for agriculture, food security and nutrition, which we hope will better serve you, as well as IFAD.

I hope that many of you will be able to attend tomorrow’s high-level round table discussion so that we can hear directly from you on what we can to do to improve our partnerships for financing agriculture and rural development. 

We have taken an important  first step in recognizing that smallholders are business women and men.  But we must now move to the next step and create the conditions for these potential entrepreneurs to invest in creating sustainable, profitable businesses.

As the only international financial institution that caters exclusively to the needs of smallholders, we will work to mobilize much needed, additional sources of finance that will allow small and medium enterprises to thrive.

In 2014, we will be engaged in defining a new roadmap for the Fund during IFAD10 – all of this within the framework of the end of the Millennium Development Goals in 2015 and the beginning of the Sustainable Development Goals.

All of our efforts for the coming years are designed to position IFAD as a global catalyst of investments that enable smallholder agriculture to drive progress towards food security and improved nutrition, poverty reduction and more resilient ecosystems.

This is not only my vision, but a vision that you have all agreed should guide our work up to 2015.

Working together, I know we can make rural areas an engine of growth, providing food, jobs and a decent income for the 3 billion rural women and men of the developing world. 

I thank you again for giving me the opportunity to make this vision a reality. With your continued support and trust in my leadership, I am certain that we will be successful in our efforts.

Rome, 13 February 2013