Shenggen Fan has been Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) since 2009.

Growing up in rural China in the 1960s and 1970s, Dr. Fan became deeply committed to reducing poverty and hunger. He is convinced that innovative, country-owned, country-led approaches are required to achieve ambitious development goals. Along those lines, he recently proposed a new “business-as-unusual” approach to ending hunger: (1) invest in two core pillars—agriculture and social protection, (2) bring in new players, (3) adopt a country-led, bottom-up approach, (4) design policies using evidence and experience, and (5) measure whether commitments have been fulfilled.

Dr. Fan joined IFPRI in 1995 as a research fellow, conducting extensive research on pro-poor development strategies in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Dr. Fan led IFPRI’s program on public investment before becoming the director of the Institute’s Development Strategy and Governance Division in 2005.

He received a PhD in applied economics from the University of Minnesota and bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Nanjing Agricultural University in China.

Dr. Fan is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Food Security, as well as an Executive Committee member of the International Association of Agricultural Economists. He currently serves on the editorial boards of Food Policy and the Journal of Chinese Rural Economy.