Shobha Shetty is a Practice Manager with the Food & Agriculture Global Practice of the World Bank covering Eastern, Central and Southern Africa. She oversees a portfolio of agriculture and rural development projects and analytic work of more than $2 billion. Her work and interests span agribusiness development, women’s empowerment, nutrition sensitive agriculture, urban food systems, rural youth employment, climate resilience, and rural-urban linkages.
Shetty has also served as Practice Manager for Global Partnerships in the Social, Urban, Rural, Resilience Global Practice of the World Bank and as a Practice Manager, Food and Agriculture in the South Asia region.
She has previously worked in the Philippines, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Timor-Leste, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Tunisia, Syria, Saudi Arabia on a wide range of issues pertaining to agriculture and rural development including irrigation and water resources management, the role of ICT in rural development, agricultural marketing, wastewater reuse, rural infrastructure and food security. In 2015, she was a Visiting Fellow at the Tata-Cornell Agriculture and Nutrition Initiative (TCi) at Cornell University, NY.
Shetty has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Anna University, Madras, India. She obtained her masters and Ph.D. degrees in agricultural economics from Cornell University.