Ed Mabaya is a scholar and a development practitioner with more than three decades of experience working on development, agribusiness value chains and food security issues with a regional focus on Sub-Saharan Africa.

He is a Research Professor in the Department of Global Development, at Cornell University. His teaching, research and outreach work focuses on food security and economic development in Africa. Previously he was the Division Manager of Agribusiness Development at the African Development Bank (2018-2020) where he managed continent-wide investments, partnerships and research in support of the Feed Africa strategy.

Mabaya’s applied research work is anchored around food policy, enabling environments for agribusiness, seed systems, digital solutions for smallholder agriculture, and the role of efficient agricultural markets in Africa’s economic development. He is the former President of African Association of Agricultural Economists (2017-2019) an Archbishop Desmond Tutu Leadership Fellow (2007) and The Aspen Institute’s New Voices Fellow (2016).