Mr Aziz Elbehri is a US national born in Morocco with over 30 years of professional experience in the field of agricultural and economic development, socio-economic and trade analyses, and food policy. Aziz has a Ph.D. in Trade and Development from Purdue University, two master's degrees in agronomy and agricultural economics from the University of Minnesota, and an Ingenieur d'Etat degree from the Institut Agronomique et Veterinaire Hassan II, Morocco.
Aziz served as an agricultural trade economist with USDA Economic Research Service for ten years, specializing in US and European Union agricultural policies. Since 2008, Aziz joined FAO as a senior economist specializing in Trade and Development and food policy issues based in the Trade and Markets Division at FAO in Rome. In October 2018, Aziz transferred to Bangkok Regional Office and has been serving as Senior Economic and Group leader of the Socio-economic Policy and Rural Development Stream at the FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok. Aziz has a long track of excellence in agricultural policy, research and analyses, and development.
He has published numerous publications in peer-reviewed journal articles, special FAO reports, and chapters and edited several publications on trade policy, climate change and food security, agricultural markets and value chains, biofuels, gender economics, and more. Aziz was the lead author of the IPCC Special Report on Climate change and Land (issued in 2019).
Aziz has strong technical expertise in agrifood systems and socio-economics, trade and markets. Currently, Aziz is the lead technical coordinator for the FAO flagship Digital Village Initiative in Asia and Pacific and is leading the regional work on socio-economic and rural development, including the digitalization of agrifood systems, regional trade, trade facilitation, and digital trade in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukraine crisis.
Across his career, Aziz has lived, visited, and worked in 50 countries across all continents, including North America (United States, Canada), Latin America (Ecuador, Chile, Columbia), West Africa (Senegal, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Cameroun, Ghana), East and Southern Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe), North Africa and the Near East (Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Lebanon), Central Asia (Uzbekistan, I.R. Iran), South Asia (Bangladesh, Bhutan, India Nepal, Sri Lanka), South East Asia (Indonesia, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Thailand, the Philippines), and East Asia (Mongolia, R. of Korea, China).