Amina Jane Mohammed (born 27 June 1961) is the current Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations and a former Minister of Environment of Nigeria. Amina Mohammed was born in Liverpool, UK, in 1961 to a Nigerian veterinarian–officer and a British nurse. She is the eldest of five daughters.
Early Life and Education: Mohamed attended a primary school in Kaduna and Maiduguri, and Buchan School in the UK. She further attended Henley Management College in 1989. After she finished her studies her father demanded she returns to Nigeria.
Career: Between 1981 and 1991, Mohamed worked with Archcon Nigeria in association with Norman and Dawbarn United Kingdom. In 1991, she founded Afri-Projects Consortium, and from 1991 to 2001 she was its Executive Director.
From 2002 until 2005, Mohammed coordinated the Task Force on Gender and Education for the United Nations Millennium Project.
Mohammed later acted as the Senior Special Assistant to the President of Nigeria on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In 2005, she was charged with the coordination of Nigeria’s debt relief funds toward the achievement of the MDGs. Her mandate included designing a Virtual Poverty Fund with innovative approaches to poverty reduction, budget coordination, and monitoring, as well as providing advice on pertinent issues regarding poverty, public sector reform, and sustainable development.
Mohammed later became the Founder and CEO of the Center for Development Policy Solutions and as an Adjunct Professor for the Masters in Development Practice program at Columbia University. During that time, she served on numerous international advisory boards and panels, including the UN Secretary-General’s High-level Panel on Post-2015 Development Agenda and the Independent Expert Advisory Group on the Data Revolution for Sustainable Development. She also chaired the Advisory Board of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Global Monitoring Report on Education (GME).
From 2012, Mohammed was a key player in the Post-2015 Development Agenda process, serving as the Special Adviser to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Post-2015 development planning. In this role, she acted as the link between the Secretary-General, his High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons (HLP), and the General Assembly’s Open Working Group (OWG), among other stakeholders. From 2014, she also served on the Secretary-General’s Independent Expert Advisory Group on the Data Revolution for Sustainable Development.
Achievements:
- Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, Member of the Board of Directors (since 2017)
- ActionAid, International Right to Education Project, Member of the Advisory Board
- Global Development Program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Member of the Advisory Board
- Hewlett Foundation, Member of the Board
- International Development Research Centre, Member of the Board of Governors
- Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (ISTIC), Member of the Advisory Board
- Order of the Federal Republic (2006)
- Nigerian Women’s Hall of Fame (2007)
- Ford Family Notre Dame Award for International Development and Solidarity (2015)
- Diplomat of the Year Awards (2017)
- Ms. Mohammed received the Sarraounia chieftaincy title of Niger in 2018. She was installed by that country’s chiefs (2018)
- BBC 100 Women (2018) for her work as deputy secretary general of the United Nations