Jimmy Smith (M.S. ’82 and Ph.D. ‘86 in animal sciences ) recently received the Madhuri and Jagdish N. Sheth International Alumni Award for Exceptional Achievement as part of the 2019 Illinois International Achievement Awards.

Smith has used livestock to transform lives and livelihoods, grow economies, and address food insecurity around the world in ways that are socially just and environmentally sustainable. He came to the University of Illinois as an international student in 1980 and has since returned as a distinguished lecturer and active member of various external advisory boards.

For the past eight years, Smith has served as Director General of the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) based in Kenya. ILRI is an international research organization in the family of CGIAR Centres working towards a food secure world. In this role and throughout his career, Smith’s work to secure sustained food security and poverty alleviation through livestock has embodied the land-grant mission to create and spread knowledge in the interest of humanity. 

Under Smith’s leadership, ILRI has been a major force for mobilizing resources and finding technical solutions to address poverty and food insecurity. Some of the many achievements that Smith’s leadership has brought about include developing livestock master plans for Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Bihar State, India, which have triggered transformational investments of over $250 million to alleviate poverty through livestock development. Smith has helped develop improved dairy value chains in Ethiopia, resulting in over 100,000 farm households more than doubling their milk sales, while adopting more environmentally sustainable practices.

A citizen of Canada, Smith was born in Guyana where he was raised on a small farm on the Berbice River. He attended the Guyana School of Agriculture, was employed in Guyana’s Ministry of Agriculture, and was eventually granted a scholarship to study agriculture at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, where he obtained his B.S. degree. On his return to Guyana in 1977, Smith secured employment with the Livestock Development Company and was largely responsible for the company’s large-scale dairy unit. His performance led to a promotion to Production Director in charge of four cattle ranches (60,000 head) and two large dairy farms. But rather than remain a farm manager, Smith enrolled at the University of Illinois in 1980, where he obtained his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Animal Sciences.

From Illinois, Smith went on to work for the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute in Trinidad, where he applied his scientific and management expertise to develop national and regional agricultural strategies that promote economic progress and food security in the Caribbean; the International Livestock Center for Africa; the Canadian International Development Agency where he served as Principal Policy Advisor for Agriculture and Rural Development ; and the World Bank, where he managed its portfolio in livestock, agriculture, and rural development before returning to ILRI as its director in 2011.

Smith returned to Illinois in November to accept this Illinois International award, bringing his wife and daughter, who was born in Champaign-Urbana but had never since visited. He and his wife have a great nostalgia for their time at Illinois and maintain connections in the community.

During the panel discussion that included the 2019 award recipients, Smith noted that his perspective has changed since he started work in the developing world from being focused on poverty to focusing on development aspects. “What I see now in the developing world is opportunity,” he said.

Read Smith’s full nomination here.