Regional Director, West and Central Africa Division

Bernard Mwinyel Hien

Bernard Mwinyel Hien is the Regional Director of the West and Central Africa (WCA) Division of IFAD, responsible for managing both the human and financial resources of the division and serving on IFAD’s corporate wide senior management team. He provides strategic vision, leadership, and guidance in policy development and advice, country programme development and management, management of resources and representation.

Through an understanding of the countries' needs and IFAD’s potential to address them, Hien leads the formulation of country strategies and guides the development and management of effective operations and knowledge work from planning, implementation, supervision and evaluation. He develops and maintains high-level partnerships with counterparts, including the government, farmers’ organizations and the private sector.

Before joining the Fund in 2011, Hien worked as Team Leader at the Poverty Reduction and Environment Unit at UNDP Togo where he managed a portfolio of 13 projects and programmes in the areas of integrated rural development, MDGs, water, energy, climate change and disaster risk reduction. Earlier positions included Program Specialist with UNDP and World Bank projects in Burkina Faso, and Research Associate with the National Institute of Agricultural & Environmental Research in Burkina Faso.

Hien holds a rural development engineering degree from the Polytechnic University of Bobo (Burkina Faso), a Master of Sciences in Natural Resources Management from South Dakota State University (USA), which he also served as PhD Research Associate. He is certified in Monitoring and Evaluation (Brighton, UK), in leadership and sustainable development from the University of California (Berkeley, CA, USA) and in management and leadership from Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, USA).