Dr. Ismahane Elouafi has served as Executive Managing Director of CGIAR since December 2023. As head of the world’s largest global research partnership dedicated to transforming agrifood systems, she oversees CGIAR’s work across 89 countries through its 15 research centers and 3,000+ partnerships. Renowned globally for her leadership in biosaline agriculture, crop diversification, and women’s empowerment in science, Dr. Elouafi previously served as Chief Scientist at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and Director General of ICBA. She was named to the 2025 TIME100 list of the world’s most influential people.

Since 2023, Dr. Elouafi has been a prominent contributor to WAFI. In 2024, she represented CGIAR as an important guest at WAFI, bringing CGIAR’s cutting-edge research and global networks into the heart of WAFI’s international platform.

At the “Technological Innovation for Low-Carbon Transition” sub-forum, she emphasized agriculture’s unique potential as a carbon sink and presented three key CGIAR-China collaborations under Mitigate+: the development of MRV systems, near-zero carbon smart village pilots, and low-carbon rice lifecycle assessments.

During the Women in Agrifood Innovation Forum, Dr. Elouafi made a powerful call to systemically invest in women as changemakers. She likened gender equality to the wings of a bird—without both, humanity cannot soar—and called for inclusive leadership, resource access, and collective empowerment.

At the main forum’s opening, she underscored the dual imperative of innovation and peace. She opposed the weaponization of food, highlighted the role of AI, climate-resilient breeding, and early-warning systems, and urged investment in integrated, cross-sectoral innovation—with youth and marginalized voices at the center.

In a featured interview with 21st Century Business Herald, Dr. Elouafi identified conflict, climate instability, and economic volatility as the root causes of global hunger. She called for a systemic transformation of agrifood value chains and praised China's model of innovation-driven rural development. CGIAR, she noted, looks forward to deepening collaborations with Chinese institutions in breeding, digital agriculture, and policy innovation.

Dr. Elouafi’s facilitation of the CGIAR-WAFI strategic partnership in 2025 has brought unmatched value to the WAFI platform—positioning it as a key node in global agricultural research dialogue and accelerating the deployment of sustainable, climate-resilient agrifood innovations.