Sokoine University of Agriculture Convocation

Prof. Dr. Anna Tibaijuka.

The Quest Speaker to the 2003 Convocation Luncheon was Prof. Dr. Anna Tibaijuka. Professor Dr. Anna Kajumulo TIBAIJUKA (D.Sc., Agro-Economics) UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director, UN-HABITAT, Director-General, United Nations Office at Nairobi (UNON)

Anna Tibaijuka is the first African woman elected by the UN General Assembly as Under-Secretary-General of a United Nations programme. She is currently serving a second, four-year term as Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN-HABITAT. A Tanzanian national born to smallholder banana-coffee farmers in Muleba, Tanzania, she was educated at the Swedish University of Agricultural Science in Uppsala. In October 2006, she was appointed Director-General of the United Nations Offices in Nairobi (UNON), the only UN headquarters in Africa and the developing world.

She has served as a Member of the Commission for Africa established by British Prime Minister Tony Blair which resulted in the cancellation of multilateral debt for several African countries by the G8 Summit in 2005 at Glen Eagles, Scotland. In July 2005 the Secretary General appointed Mrs. Tibaijuka as his Special Envoy on Human Settlements Issues in Zimbabwe following massive evictions of the poor in urban areas. She is currently a member of the World Health Organization Commission on the Social Determinants of Health, and is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Commission on the Legal Empowerment of the Poor, co-chaired by the former US Secretary of State, Ms. Madeleine Albright, and the Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto.

Anna is Matron of Tanzania Young Entrepreneurs Initiative. She is a member of various professional associations and is a veteran of UN world summits, including the Beijing Women’s Conference, the Copenhagen Social Summit, Habitat II at Istanbul, and the Food Summit in Rome. She is winner of several awards including honorary Doctorate degrees conferred by the University of McGill in Canada, University College London, and Herriot Watt in Scotland. She is a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry and the International Center for Tropical Agriculture. She is a widow with 5 children, one of whom is adopted.