Awudu Abdulai
Awudu Abdulai (born in 1958) is a Ghanaian agricultural and development economist, and professor at the Institute of Food Economics and Consumption Studies, University of Kiel, Germany. His research and teaching focus on issues related to poverty alleviation, food and nutrition security, consumer behavior, and sustainable agriculture. Education and career. Abdulai earned his BSc degree in agricultural economics from the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana, and both his MSc and PhD degrees from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH-Zurich) in 1990 and 1994, respectively. He received the prestigious outstanding PhD Dissertation Award  from ETH-Zurich in 1994. After spending some time as a visiting scholar at Iowa State University in 1997-1998 and Yale University in 2002, Abdulai became an Assistant Professor for Food Economics at the ETH-Zurich, before moving to the University of Kiel in 2004, where he is currently Professor of Food Economics and Food Policy, and Director of the Institute of Food Economics and Consumption Studies. He was invited Cargill Visiting Professor at the Center on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford University (2010–2011). He has been the Editor-in-Chief of Agricultural Economics (flagship journal for  the International Association of Agricultural Economists) since 2012. He has also served as Associate Editor and editorial board member of many reputable journals including the American journal of Agricultural Economics and Food Policy. In 2017, Abdulai became the chair of the Graduate Committee of the Faculty of Agriculture and Food Sciences at the University of Kiel.  He was recently appointed as member of the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA) Fellows Selection Committee in 2021 for the five-year period 2021–2026. Abdulai has consulted for several international institutions, including the World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO), World  Food Program (WFP), International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the Bank of Ghana. Awards. In 2006, Awudu received the Teaching Excellence Award of the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences at the University of Kiel.  In 2015, he was awarded the African-German Network Association Annual Prize for Research and Development. Awudu was inducted as Distinguished Fellow of the African Association of Agricultural Economists in 2010, and was the first black scholar to be named Fellow of the Agricultural & Applied Economics Association (AAEA) in 2020. He was also named an Honorary Life Member (Fellow ) of the International Association of Agricultural Economists in 2021.