The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) is an international agricultural research center founded in the early 1970s to improve the understanding of national agricultural and food policies to promote the adoption of innovations in agricultural technology. Additionally, IFPRI was meant to shed more light on the role of agricultural and rural development in the broader development pathway of a country. The mission of IFPRI is to seek sustainable solutions for ending hunger and poverty through research.

IFPRI carries out food policy research and disseminates it through hundreds of publications, bulletins, conferences, and other initiatives. IFPRI was organized as a District of Columbia non-profit, non-stock corporation on March 5, 1975 and its first research bulletin was produced in February 1976. IFPRI has offices in several developing countries, including China, Ethiopia, and India, and has research staff working in many more countries around the world. Most of the research takes place in developing countries in Central America, South America, Africa, and Asia.

John Kofi Agyekum Kufuor (born 8 December 1938) was the second president of the 4th Republic of Ghana (2001–2009) and Chairperson of the African Union (2007–2008). His victory over John Atta-Mills after the end of Jerry Rawlings' second term marked the first peaceful democratic transition of power in Ghana since the country's independence in 1957.

Kufuor's career has been spent on the liberal-democratic side of Ghanaian politics, in the parties descended from the United Gold Coast Convention and the United Party. He was a minister in Kofi Abrefa Busia's Progress Party government during Ghana's Second Republic, and a Popular Front Party opposition frontbencher during the Third Republic. In the Fourth Republic he stood as the New Patriotic Party's candidate at the 1996 election, and then led it to victory in 2000 and 2004. Having served two terms, in 2008 he was no longer eligible for the presidency.

An Asante, Kufuor married Theresa Kufuor (née Mensah) in 1962, with whom he has had five children. Kufuor and his family belong to the Roman Catholic Church. He was born in Kumasi and educated at Osei Tutu Boarding School (1951–53), Prempeh College (1954–58), Lincoln's Inn, London (1959–1961) and Exeter College, University of Oxford (1961–1964). In the Second Republic's Parliamentary Register Kufuor lists as his hobbies and interests table tennis, reading, football, and film shows.

Ertharin Cousin (born 1957) is, since 2012, the twelfth Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme.

From 2009 to 2012, Ertharin Cousin served under President Barack Obama as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture, serving in Rome, Italy, and chief of the United States Mission to the UN Agencies in Rome. Before that, she worked in a variety of public and private sector positions, first as a Democratic Party official, later specializing in the food industry and related charities from the late 1990s on.

Cousin grew up in the poor Lawndale neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois along with her three sisters. Her mother, Anne Cousin, worked in the social services field and her father often engaged in volunteer community development work.

She earned a B.A. degree from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1979 and a J.D. degree from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1982. At the latter, she studied international law under former U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk.

Dr. Shenggen Fan is the Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) since December 2009.

He is known for his work on transition economies and rural development in China. His research has focused on the analysis of the role of public and private investments agriculture and public infrastructure in the fight against chronic poverty and hunger. In addition to his work on his home country, he has also work extensively in other Asian countries, and East Africa.

He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees from Nanjing Agricultural University in China. In 1989, he graduated from the College of Agricultural, Food, and Environmental Sciences of the University of Minnesota with a Ph.D. in applied economics. His research was the first to separately measure the effects of the green revolution promoted by international agricultural research, technological change, and institutional changes in China, on the productivity of the Chinese agricultural system.

After completing his Ph.D., he was (1990–1992) Post-doctoral fellow and associate research officer at the International Service for National Agricultural Research (ISNAR) in The Hague, the Netherlands, and then Research Economist at the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. From there he went to the International Service for National Agricultural Research (ISNAR) in the Netherlands before joining IFPRI in 1995.

Rajiv “Raj” Shah (born March 9, 1973) is an American politician who is the currently the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). He was confirmed by the Senate on December 24, 2009, replacing acting chief Alonzo Fulgham. In this capacity, he has led USAID in efforts to provide relief to the earthquake victims in Haiti and to flood victims in Pakistan.

Prior to his appointment at USAID, Shah worked in a range of leadership roles at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation including Director of Agricultural Development, Director of Financial Services, leader of the Strategic Opportunities initiative and manager of the Foundation’s $1.5 billion commitment to the Vaccine Fund. He also came up with the idea for the International Finance Facility for Immunization to transform the global system of vaccine financing, and worked to secure donor commitments of more than $5 billion for this facility. Before joining the Gates Foundation, Shah was a health care policy advisor on the Al Gore presidential campaign, 2000 and a member of Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell's transition committee on health.