The independent board of trustees of the Justus von Liebig-Award for World Nutrition unanimously decided to award the prize 2024 to Dr. Agnes Kalibata from Rwanda. It is convinced that Dr. Agnes Kalibata dedicated her life’s work to a world free from hunger. Since 2014 she is the President of AGRA and, together with public and private partners, leads the organization’s efforts to create a food-secure and prosperous Africa through rapid, inclusive and sustainable food systems change, thereby contributing to improvement of the lives of millions of smallholder farmers.

Before joining AGRA, Dr. Kalibata was Rwanda’s Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources (MINAGRI) from 2008 to 2014, where she drove government programs that moved her country toward food security. Dr. Kalibata grew up at a refugee camp in Uganda, where her parents grew beans and maize, and kept cows. She earned a bachelor’s degree in entomology and biochemistry, followed by a master’s degree in agriculture, both from Makerere University in Uganda. She then received a Ph.D. in entomology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

From 2019 to 2021, Dr. Kalibata served as the Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for the 2021 Food Systems’ Summit, a catalytic process at the start of the Decade of Action to improve food systems around the world to deliver on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Paris Agreement. The process she put in place, generated buy-in across 166 member states and is said to have reached 3.5 billion people, produced the Science Reader that now has over 1 million downloads and catalyzed a global movement on Food Systems transformation.

In 2023, Dr. Kalibata was appointed to the Advisory Committee of the 28th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP28) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). As a member of the COP28 Presidential Advisory Board, Dr. Kalibata played a major role in ensuring that the final document included food, nutrition, and agriculture as they relate to climate change leading to the UAE Declaration on Food Systems and Climate Change signed by 159 countries.

In 2022, she received an Award from the World Farmers’ Organization recognizing her leadership in mobilizing farmers’ contribution to the Food Systems’ Summit. She is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards, including the now rebranded Africa Food Prize, honorary doctorates from the University of Liège (2018), and McGill University (2019), and is a recipient of the Welfare Medal of the U.S National Academy of Sciences.