Jeanine Cooper

Jeanine Cooper was commissioned as Liberia’s Minister of Agriculture in February, 2020. Since then, Minister Cooper has re-oriented the Ministry of Agriculture to focus on agri-business, partnerships, and coordination. She has formulated -and is implementing- a food systems approach with heavy focus on expanding food production, boosting agro-processing, supporting livelihoods, and improving farmers’ access to finance and resources. Previously, Ms. Cooper founded FABRAR Liberia in 2009 and had been managing the company since January 2017. From a micro-milling operation, purchasing rice from smallholder farmers, FABRAR has grown to be Liberia’s largest rice producer.

Ms. Cooper served 13 years with the United Nations. Her last posting was as the Permanent Representative to the African Union and the Economic Commission for Africa and Head of the Liaison Office for the U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA). Ms. Cooper’s career spans an additional 10 years of humanitarian work with international NGOs.

She graduated from Michigan State University in 1982 with a double B.A. in Business Administration and in French and she has an MSc in Managing Rural Change from the University of London, Imperial College at Wye in 2004.