President Irfaan Ali has nominated renowned Guyanese agricultural scientist Muhammad Ibrahim, who has more than three decades of international experience, as a candidate to head the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA).
“This candidacy, which is from Guyana, and also Caribbean and South American, like our country, is an invitation to work together for the agricultural development of Guyana and the Caribbean,” Ali said in a statement released on Friday.
The announcement coincided with the Brazil-Caribbean summit in Brasilia, where Ali asked his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to support Guyana’s candidate.
The candidacy was also officially communicated to IICA in a note sent to the agency’s headquarters in San José, Costa Rica.
The new Director General of IICA for the 2026-2030 term, who will replace Argentine veterinarian Manuel Otero, will be elected in November during a meeting of the ministers of agriculture of the Americas in Brazil.
Ibrahim’s candidacy comes at a time when the Government of Guyana is implementing several large-scale transformative financial investment initiatives to boost agricultural and fishing activity.
The Guyanese president explained that they will seek “the support of the continent’s agricultural powers, from Argentina, Brazil, and Chile to the United States and Mexico, to take a decisive step on the road to that development.”
“Our country has entered a phase of accelerated development and is also the new agricultural frontier of the Americas,” Ali said.
The announcement of Ibrahim’s candidacy for the General Directorate of IICA, an agency of the Inter-American System for Agricultural and Rural Development, was made in Georgetown in the presence of the candidate himself and Guyana’s Minister of Agriculture, Zulfikar Mustapha.
After the meeting, Ibrahim met with the Secretary General of the Caribbean Community (Caricom), Carla Barnett, according to the Guyanese Presidency.
An agricultural engineer from the University of Guyana, Ibrahim holds a master’s degree in Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources with an emphasis on Animal Nutrition from the Center for Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education (CATIE) in Costa Rica, where he was director general.
He also holds a PhD in Agricultural and Environmental Sciences with a specialization in Livestock and Animal Nutrition from Wageningen University in the Netherlands.
Ibrahim, who has developed his international career in countries in Central America and the Caribbean, has held technical positions at IICA, serving in various capacities in Belize and Costa Rica.
“My profile is that of a technician with extensive experience in institutional management, who has dedicated 35 years to building networks to increase the productivity and resilience of the agricultural sector in the Americas,” said Ibrahim.
The candidate to head IICA explained that he established partnerships, mobilized financial resources, and made key contacts to “ensure the success of these objectives in the Americas and its island countries.” (EFE News Agency)
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