GEORGETOWN, Guyana — President of Guyana, Mohamed Irfaan Ali, has announced that his government will be nominating Guyanese agricultural scientist Muhammad Ibrahim as a candidate for the position of director general of the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA).

The announcement was made after President Ali and Minister of Agriculture, Zulfikar Mustapha, met with Ibrahim in Guyana’s capital, Georgetown. An official nomination letter was then sent to IICA, signed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Hugh Hilton Todd.

In an official statement, President Ali said Guyana “has entered a phase of accelerated growth and is also the new agricultural frontier of the Americas. This candidacy is from Guyana, but is also Caribbean and South American, because our country belongs to both regions. Moreover, it is an invitation to work together for the agricultural development of Guyana, the Caribbean, Central America, and the Americas in general.”

He added that Guyana “will seek the support of the continent’s agricultural powerhouses, from Argentina, Brazil and Chile to the United States, Canada and Mexico, to support and take a major, decisive step on the path to the development we seek and are capable of achieving”.

Ibrahim holds a master’s degree in agricultural sciences and natural resources with an emphasis on animal nutrition from the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center (CATIE) in Costa Rica, where he later served as director general, and a doctorate in agricultural and environmental sciences with a specialisation in livestock and animal nutrition from Wageningen University in the Netherlands.

“I am an agricultural engineer with extensive experience in international management who has dedicated 35 years to building networks to increase the productivity and resilience of the agriculture sector in the Americas, establishing partnerships, mobilising financial resources, working with decision-makers, and establishing key contacts to ensure the success of these objectives in the Americas and its island nations,” he said.

Ibrahim was also an IICA official, holding various positions in Belize and Costa Rica.

A new director general of IICA will be elected by the ministers of agriculture of 34 countries in the Americas in November, when the Inter-American Board of Agriculture (IABA) meets.