Margarita Aswani

Margarita Aswani leads strategy, planning, and management for the Agricultural Development team. In that role, she applies her wealth of practical, on-the-ground experience, knowledge, operational processes, and partnerships to help achieve impact for small-scale agricultural producers.

Before joining the foundation in 2023, Margarita spent more than two years at Mercy Corps, where she served as Chief of Party for the Feed the Future, Nigeria Rural Resilience Activity, USAID’s largest food security investment in northeast Nigeria. In addition to reaching more than 500,000 farmers and agribusinesses, she increased the size of the investment from US$30 million to US$49 million.

Earlier, Margarita worked in the private sector, most recently with DAI, where she served as deputy team leader of the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office’s governance and anticorruption program, PERL, achieving significant budgeting and policy reforms in 18 states across Nigeria.

Margarita has extensive field experience in several African countries, as well as expertise in monitoring and evaluation, policy development, strategic communications and advocacy, and political economy analysis.