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Archive -President Michel

Seychellois Perin St Ange appointed Ifad vice-president |19 January 2015

Seychellois Perin St Ange is the new vice-president of Ifad (International Fund for Agricultural Development) and will effective February 1 also become the director of the Office of the president and chief of staff.

Before his recent appointment, Mr St Ange was the director of the Eastern and Southern Africa Division (ESA) for Ifad.

Mr St Ange has had a long and successful career, both within Ifad, the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), and in the external public and private sectors. He joined Ifad in 1998 as a country portfolio manager in what was then the Africa I division, then became a country programme manager, loans officer in the Office of the Controller. In 2007 he returned to Africa I (which later became WCA) as a portfolio advisor before becoming the director of ESA in 2012.
 
Prior to joining Ifad, Mr St Ange’s extensive experience include serving as director general within the Ministry of Agriculture in his home country Seychelles, as well as an agricultural economist at the FAO Investment Centre, carrying out various assignments as an economist and natural resource management and agricultural specialist.

When he announced Mr St Ange’s appointment as director of the Office of the president and vice-president and chief of staff, Ifad president Kanayo F Nwanze said: "I know I speak for all of my EMC colleagues and the staff of OPV when I say how fortunate we are to have a person with such an extensive, broad and relevant background join us for the final years of my term. The coming years will be both exciting and challenging, and Perin will be an important asset in helping all of us at Ifad make those years successful, for the ultimate benefit of the rural poor we all serve. Perin also leaves an important legacy in ESA that we must preserve and we will immediately begin to seek a replacement for him. Although we would normally advertise director level positions externally, this time we will focus our vacancy advertisement first on internal candidates, given the very strong pool of potential applicants. Please join me in welcoming Perin to his new position, and please offer him the support and collaboration he will need to help all of us become even more productive and effective.”

Congratulating his brother Perin on his recent appointment, Tourism and Culture Minister Alain St Ange said Perin has done not only the St Ange family proud but also done Seychelles proud.

“Our dear father Karl St Ange would have been so proud. You were the one to follow in his footsteps in the field of agriculture and you have done him proud,” said Minister St Ange.

Karl St Ange grew up on the island of La Digue where he became a very successful farmer before joining politics. He became the vice-president of the Seychelles People's United Party (SPUP) working to push for the independence of Seychelles from Great Britain. He was elected to the governing council and legislative council of Seychelles when the islands were still a British colony and after independence became Minister for Agriculture and later Health during the country’s second republic.

Ifad is a specialised agency of the United Nations dedicated to eradicating rural poverty in developing countries. It was established as an international financial institution in 1977 as one of the major outcomes of the 1974 World Food Conference. Seventy-five percent of the world's poor live in rural areas in developing countries, yet only 4% of official development help goes to agriculture.

Its headquarters is in Rome, Italy, and is a member of the United Nations Development Group.

Its goal is to empower poor rural women and men in developing countries to achieve higher incomes and improved food security.

Among its objectives Ifad seeks to ensure that poor rural people have better access to, and the skills and organisation they need to take advantage of:
• Natural resources, especially secure access to land and water, and improved natural resource management and conservation practices;
• Improved agricultural technologies and effective production services;
• A broad range of financial services;
• Transparent and competitive markets for agricultural inputs and produce;
• Opportunities for rural off-farm employment and enterprise development;
• Local and national policy and programming.

 

 

 

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