Babatunde Omilola

Professor Babatunde Omilola is a global development leader. He has held senior level positions with several global institutions including the United Nations Development Program, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the International Food Policy Research Institute, and the African Development Bank Group. 

He managed the African Development Bank’s multi-billion-dollar response to the COVID-19 pandemic to stabilize African economies. He also led the United Nations Inter-Agency Task Team on the monitoring and reporting of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) globally. 

Babatunde was a Yale World Fellow at Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs, a Fellow on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University, a Ford Foundation International Fellow, a Fellow of the International Development Research Centre, Canada and a Fellow of the Comparative Research Program for preventing and eradicating poverty of the International Science Council. 

Since 2014, he has been an inaugural member of the Committee on Science for the Reduction of Poverty and Inequality of the Academy of Science of South Africa. 

Babatunde holds both MPhil and Ph.D. degrees in International Development and Development Economics from the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, United Kingdom. 

He has received Executive Education at the Harvard Business School, the Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore as part of the United Nations Executive Leadership Program for Sustainable Development.

Babatunde has visited and delivered development assistance in over 80 countries worldwide in Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America, and the Caribbean.