Dr. Asenso-Okyere was a staunch member of Africa’s intellectual community. Upon his retirement from University of Ghana, he accepted a job from IFPRI, an international food and agriculture agency. He died in May 2014 in Mongolia, where he was on a consultancy assignment for the UN’s FAO.
Dr. Asenso-Okyere worked at IFPRI from 2006 to 2012, first with the Nigeria Country Strategy Support Program, then as head of ISNAR (International Service for National Agricultural Research), which became the Knowledge, Capacity, and Innovation Division (KCID), and finally as director of IFPRI’s East and Southern Africa Regional Office in Addis Ababa. His leadership and ideas were invaluable through these many transitions.
With a Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics from University of Missouri in Columbia, USA, he published extensively in Pan-African and international journals. He is survived by six children and his widow, E. Nana Yaa Asenso-Okyere of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) in Accra, Ghana.
