Coumba Dieng Sow

Coumba D. Sow is a Senegalese agroeconomist and public policy specialist .^[1] She was the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization Country Representative inRwanda and a.i in Djibouti.^[2]

She has been listed in 2022 and 2023 among the 100 most influential women in Africa because of her unique engagement for agriculture and support to women and youth in this sector.^[3]

Education

Sow trained at Sciences Po Paris, the University of London and in agrifood in Montpellier.^[4]

Career

Sow joined the United Nations in 2006 as FAO Agricultural Policy Officer working in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. She worked amongst others in the implementation of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) of the NEPAD.

She then became in 2013 Responsible for Africa at the Office of the Director-General of FAO.

From 2017, she was in charge of emergency humanitarian and resilience actions, for the FAO, in the West Africa and Sahel subregion.^[5]

Coumba D. Sow is a strong advocate for African youth and women empowerment in the agriculture sector, raising awareness of the existed realities of you and women farmers in Africa and supporting the removal of barriers for them to access land, inputs, finances, training, technologies, and innovations which would help reducing hunger, and increasing revenues and economic growth.^[6]

Coumba D. Sow works to improve the livelihoods of vulnerable populations in Africa, whose food and nutritional security is regularly threatened. She defends the use of endogenous knowledge of the populations themselves, including agroecology and country investments to reduce vulnerabilities and create the conditions for the development of agriculture.^[7]

In 2018, it launched the FAO initiative: 1 million cisterns for the Sahel.^[8] The initiative aims to facilitate access to water for rural communities exposed to climate change.^[9] It is inspired by the Brazilian experience from the Fome Zero program.^[10]

She participates, invited by Achille Mbembe and Felwine Sarr in the "Ateliers de la pensée",^[11][12] an event bringing together researchers, artists and civil society actors to reflect on the challenges of the African continent and the world10. Coumba D. Sow dealt with Climate resilience and ancestral knowledge in the Sahel alongside Kako Nubukpo, Alioune Sall Paloma, Emmanuel Ndoye.

She is co-author in 2019 with José Graziano da Silva, former Director-General of FAO, of the book From Fome Zero to Zero Hunger: A global perspective^[13]

References

1. Lucas, Ángeles (2019-03-06). ""La revolución de la agricultura en África está liderada por mujeres"". El País (in Spanish). ISSN 1134-6582. Retrieved 2021-09-17.
2. "Minister Mukeshimana welcomes Ms. Coumba Dieng Sow, the new FAO Representative in Rwanda".
3. https://100women.avancemedia.org/coumbadiengsow/
4. "Coumba D. Sow: "My mission is to make sure the people here have water"". ATLANTICO. 2019-10-25. Retrieved 2021-09-17.
5. "Le Covid-19 ne pouvait arriver à un pire moment pour les communautés vulnérables d'Afrique de l'Ouest (FAO)". ONU Info (in French). 2020-04-27. Retrieved 2021-09-17.
6. https://100women.avancemedia.org/coumbadiengsow/
7. "" En Afrique, les paysans qui pratiquent l'agroécologie résistent mieux au changement climatique "". Le Monde.fr (in French). 2019-12-01. Retrieved 2021-09-17.
8. FAO (2018). "One million cisterns for the Sahel" (PDF). www.fao.org.
9. Lacroux, Margaux. "Accès à l'eau et changement climatique au Sahel : "Le plus simple est de fabriquer des citernes"". Libération (in French). Retrieved 2021-09-17.
10. "Coumba D. Sow: "My mission is to make sure the people here have water"". ATLANTICO. 2019-10-25. Retrieved 2021-09-17.
11. "A Dakar, les Ateliers de la pensée veulent transformer le paysage intellectuel africain". Le Monde.fr (in French). 2019-11-03. Retrieved 2021-09-17.
12. Meslée, Valérie Marin la (2019-11-04). "Ateliers de la pensée : la force des vies minuscules". Le Point (in French). Retrieved 2021-09-17.
13. From Fome Zero to zero hunger : a global perspective. José Francisco Graziano da Silva, Gala Dahlet, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Rome, Italy. 2019. ISBN 978-92-5-131670-2. OCLC 1122452321.