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Nigeria
Country Director, Nigeria

Yeshua Russel

Helping women and youth attain leadership and representation through the development and implementation of interventions that drive inclusive business and enterprise opportunities.

Yeshua is a Business/Enterprise Development Expert and has acted as Technical Director – Business Development to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) on the Climate Change Adaptation and Agribusiness Support Program (CASP). In that role, he provided advisory services on enhancing the performance and profitability of women and youth owned business across value chains and in seven states of Nigeria.

 Yeshua has also been a Team Leader on the World Bank Business Innovation and Growth (BIG) project (GEM), where he led a team of business development experts to provide enterprise support to multiple SMEs operating in different sectors and based in eight states in Nigeria. He also led the consulting team on the Women in Investment and Enterprise (WinIE) Project. Yeshua has a background of working on projects supported by the UN, UNDP, USAID, IFAD, DFID and World Bank. He is a Microsoft Fellow for Good and in 2018 facilitated the donation of a solar system to a rural school in Nigeria through support from Rotary International, Microsoft and Morgan Stanley USA. Yeshua has designed numerous expert business training programs and trained extensively around Nigeria. 

 Very early in his career, he designed a unique mobile theater behaviorchange project in the local Hausa dialect (Saratu – The choices of a Woman) to address prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT), which received funding from World Bank/NACA in the HAF 2 round. Yeshua has acted as CEO to a consulting firm with offices in Lagos, Abuja, London and Dubai, leading multiple teams to provide business development, process re-engineering and professional advisory services to local and international clients. Yeshua loves to travel and is a regular volunteer speaker to multiple youth groups. He is also a very good singer.