Draft:Getachew Diriba

Getachew Diriba grew up in rural Ethiopia, attending primary and secondary schools in Asella and graduating from Haramaya college of Agriculture in 1980. He then went on to do a master's at the University of Dortmund in Germany and the University of Science & Technology in Kumasi in Ghana as well as attend the School of Development Studies at the University of East Anglia in the UK where he completed his Ph.D. in agricultural economics in 1991.

He worked for the Ethiopian Government, bilateral projects, NGOs and the UN World Food Program in many countries where he has the opportunity to directly witness some of the most extraordinary transformations and triumphs over hunger and poverty, supported by policies and programs that successfully tackled the technological, environmental and financial challenges facing rural communities.

Getachew completed his international service with the UN and returned to Ethiopia in early 2017. Since then he remains actively engaged in and serves in a number of platforms including as a member of the national agricultural advisory team of the Ministry of Agriculture. He also led the Ethiopian Economics Association as Chief Executive Officer and served as a senior national advisor and core technical member in preparing the Ethiopian Food System Transformation under the auspices of the United Nations Food System to accelerate the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. He in tandem served as a senior advisor of the Ethiopian Food Systems Transformation in the Office of the Minister of Agriculture. He is a published author with his most recent work being "Ethiopia: Overcoming Agricultural and Food Crises, Institutional Evolution and the Path to Agricultural and Rural Transformation".