Jean-Robert Estime

With more than four decades of experience in the public policy sphere, Jean-Robert Estime currently serves as chief of party with the USAID funded Feed the Future West/WINNER Project. Based in Port au Prince, Haiti, he guides a multi-disciplinary organization that offers rural populations integrated agricultural infrastructure rehabilitation and modernization services. Key project objectives are to increase food production, stabilize watersheds, improve the commercialization of agricultural products and mitigate natural disaster risk factors in select ares, while increasing the ability of communities to make an agricultural livelihood. Over the past four years, Jean-Robert Estime and his team have designed and implemented major agro-forestry campaigns involving the planting of four million trees and spearheaded the greenhouse revolution that is enabling small farmers to pratice protected and vertical agriculture on high value crops in the mountains of Haiti. This is the most important technical leap accomplished in Haitian agriculture over the past 30 years that helped multiply by 20 farmer's productivity and income

A native of Haiti, Jean-Robert Estime held a number of positions in the Haitian government throughout the 1980s, including as deputy minister of finances and economic affairs, ambassador of Haiti, and as minister of foreign affairs. He joined Chemonics/USAID in the early 1990s, with a focus on assisting Burundi’s Trade Promotion Agency in increasing and diversifying foreign trade. Jean-Robert Estime facilitated and managed a host of technical assistance and training initiatives that increased Burundian enterprise competitiveness, and guided the government in implementing reforms that fostered an enabling business environment.