She turned cassava into 3,200 jobs — and put 800 women farmers in charge

Ifeoma Okonkwo did not wait for permission to build something big. The Nigerian agripreneur co-founded Ifgreen Industries, a company that turns indigenous crops — cassava above all — into nutritious foods people actually buy, while the waste from processing becomes biogas, organic fertiliser and animal feed instead of smoke and rot. The numbers in her Women in Ag Award citation (Agribusiness, first place) tell the story: more than 3,200 jobs created, over 800 women farmers empowered, and biofortified foods reaching millions of consumers. In the UN's International Year of the Woman Farmer, the judges put her at the top of a field of more than 170 applicants from 62 countries.

SDG 8 · Decent work and economic growth — Mechanism: individual leader