AgriSmart Consulting Group (ACG) is a Canadian-based consulting and development company focused on sustainable and climate smart agricultural and natural resource development projects and programs in Africa, Middle East and Asia. ACG is formed by a group of highly experienced and motivated professionals with combined hands-on experience in more than 40 countries. All group members have worked as a member and leader of multidisciplinary and multi-cultural teams interacting with a wide variety of stakeholders from senior administrators, technical experts to village chiefs and farmers, non-governmental organizations, donor agencies and private sector. This experience has given in-depth understanding of keeping a balance between technological advances and government departments as well as small farmers needs. The Group members strongly believe in south-south technology transfer and adaptation of local innovations and best practices to achieve quick but sustainable results in a cost-effective manner.

Dr. Dadgari has been working in the capacity of Team Leader/Project Manager in a number of projects in Africa, East and Southeast Asia, Middle East, Americas and Oceania, mainly in areas of environmental assessment and management, land resources evaluation, planning and development, watershed management and planning and climate and water smart agricultural development. He has more than 30 years of working experience in development of environmentally and socially sustainable and climate resilient agricultural and rural development projects. He specializes in capacity development, institutional strengthening and participatory rural development. His years of working on rural development projects with the World Bank as safeguard expert in East and Southeast Asia and Oceania has allowed him to develop a sound understanding of best practices to reduce effects of developing rural development projects on climate change and minimizing the carbon footprints of proposed projects.

Dr. Dadgari, prior to joining AgriSmart Consulting Group (ACG) as one of the original founders of the group, has been working as team leader and land resources, environment and watershed management specialist on a number small-scale and micro irrigation schemes, promoting climate resilient project development, while ensuring improving the livelihood of the farming communities through promotion of gender responsive irrigated and rainfed agricultural development and ensuring women and youth are included in agricultural and rural development activities in different areas within the value chain.

Dr. Dadgari’s academic qualifications, having a PhD in Soil Science and first degree in geology, combined with his years of practical and academic studies in irrigated agriculture and environmental planning making a highly suitable member of any project team, working on developing sustainable and climate smart agricultural, rural development and natural resource planning and management projects and programs.

Dr. Sharma is an experienced Team Leader/Project Manager with more than 30 years of varied experience in Asia and Africa and more than 30 years of experience in water resource management, watershed management and small-scale irrigation development. He specializes in institutional strengthening, participatory development, planning, design and construction of small and large irrigation and water resources development projects. He has led large teams of national and international experts in innovative practices in irrigation and water resources projects; customized capacity development, institutional strengthening. This has provided him ample opportunities to find cost-effective practical solutions for a range of field problems due to either lack of data, economic constraints or lack of institutional capacity without compromising the sustainability of interventions.

Dr. Sharma has directed project and program development in improving the capacity of national experts in planning, design, construction and management of small-scale irrigation schemes (SSI) and community level water harvesting systems. This has included participatory irrigation development and management processes and procedures; water balance studies of contributing sub-watersheds in the feasibility studies; sub-watershed or catchment protection measures; strengthening irrigation water user associations as owner of schemes; and operation and management of SSI and water harvesting schemes. The value chain approach to water resources and irrigation development ensures market based production systems leading to maximum benefits for small farms.

Mr. Sajjad Noor is an Agricultural Extension and Agribusiness Specialist with a Master’s degree in Agricultural Extension Education and Diploma in International Project Management.

Prior to joining AgriSmart Consulting Group as Vice-President and as one of the founders, he had been working with a number of Canadian consulting firms as International Agriculture Extension Advisor and for United Nations and other international agencies, mainly as Technical Program Director/Advisor for humanitarian cooperation and capacity development programs. During three decades of varied professional experience in Africa and Asia, he has been engaged in food security & livelihoods, humanitarian and development work at senior leadership level. He has worked with national governments and international organizations such as EU, USAID and Canadian GAC, international NGOs, and United Nations FAO, UNDP, IFAD and WFP.

Mr. Noor brings wealth of practical experiences, mainly in planning and development of demand-driven agricultural extension, climate-smart value chain strategies and crop diversification with a focus on dry land and irrigated agriculture development as well as creating opportunities in market-oriented, competitive and profitable agribusinesses.

Mr. Noor has worked with heads of states and ministries in many countries dealing with complex sustainable human development, conflict and post-conflict developmental challenges, food security and livelihoods development. He has been successful on strategic planning, delivery of high quality programs, training and facilitating collaborations. Sajjad is fluent in Bengali, Urdu, Hindi and Arabic languages.

Dr. Jalal Jabelli has 27 years of extensive international experience in the field of irrigation, drainage, water resources engineering, and water quality. At AgriSmart, he oversees the portfolio of small-scale irrigation and environmental engineering.

Through his career, Jalal held numerous roles including institutional strengthening, project management, and programme quality assurance. He acquires a wide-range of project management experience including development of a proposal, team mobilization, feasibility studies, comprehensive engineering design, construction supervision, capacity building and operational excellence. Over the course of last fifteen years, he has acted as project manager, senior design lead, resident engineer, team leader, and director of water department of his past employers.

With a special interest in community irrigation and climate action, Jalal holds an MSc in Civil Engineering and a PhD in Bioresource Engineering both from McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

Jalal drives by a passion for empowering disadvantaged groups and mentors a number of youth including women. He also works to strengthen engagement between the host-country stakeholders and wider farming communities. Under his leadership, he has significantly contributed in increasing rural income, sustainable development projects and developed remarkable linkages and partnerships with stakeholders across host countries.

Jalal has worked in many countries of Asia, Africa and Middle East. He is much concerned about adverse impact of climate change and thus embraces innovative techniques in his engineering practices to reduce the carbon footprint in every component of his project intervention. He is fluent in multiple languages.

Ismail Najjar is the President of CHSS Project Management Services in Dubai as well as the corporate advisor for Water and Environment of CHSS in Dubai. Previously he served as Senior Vice-President Middle East & Africa for Environment & Water, SNC-Lavalin based in Dubai from 2014 to 2016, Prior to this assignment, he served as Senior Vice-President – Water at SNC Lavalin headquarters in Montreal and was responsible for the worldwide operations of SNC-Lavalin activities in water resources. During the period 1980-2010, he was the CEO of Hydrosult Inc of Canada which he founded in Montreal in 1980 and later SNC-Lavalin acquired the company in 2011.

Ismail is a founding member and Governor of the Arab Water Council as well as a member of its Executive Committee. He is also one of the initial members of the World Water Council where he served
two terms on the Board of Governors. He was the facilitator to the Panel of Experts defining the vision for the Nile River Basin Cooperative framework and its action plan. He also led the team of Hydrosult Specialists for the preparation of the China water sector strategy in 2000.

Ismail is a water resources engineer who completed his undergraduate studies in Egypt, and his Masters degree and Doctorate studies in USA and UK respectively.

He has over 40 years of hands on experience in key aspects of water resources, and has led and directed a number of large and mega water resources planning, irrigation, water supply and dams
projects. He also acted as an advisor to a number of the IFI’s and international development agencies, such as the World Bank, ADB, UNDP, CIDA and EU in planning and programming, evaluation and project preparation, as well as policy and strategy development.

Ismail’s geographic experience includes South East Asia, China, India, Africa (West, East, and South) the Americas, and the Mena region all in the field of water resources planning, development and
management as well as in project management and procurement.

Dr. Niaz Murtaza has over 25 years of experiences in development cooperation focused on emergencies, DRR, resilience programming, local governance, economic growth, livelihoods issues and capacity building with bilateral and multilateral aid and government agencies in more than 40 countries across Asia, Africa and Americas. He has a PhD in Development Studies from the University of California at Berkeley and MBA in Finance and Management.

Dr. Niaz has high degree of expertise in developing participatory evaluation and research methodologies, household surveys and analysis of qualitative and quantitative information. He is an excellent facilitator with wide-ranging experience in managing debriefing workshops as well as learning events. He has a comprehensive knowledge and experience about international humanitarian architecture, operational planning, accountability frameworks, minimum standards and best practices in emergency management and program evaluations.

Prior to joining AgriSmart Consulting Group as Director, Dr. Niaz was working with leading international aid agencies in Asia and Africa mostly in the capacity of Country/Humanitarian

Director in which he managed large and complex humanitarian portfolio with focus on gender responsive programming and right-based approaches.

He has also a high degree of expertise in developing participatory evaluation and research methodologies, household surveys and analysis of qualitative and quantitative information.

Niaz has accomplished more than 50 evaluation studies including capacity building and systems development assessment, and proposal writing assignments in the last 10 years for NGOs, bilateral and multilateral aid and government agencies across Asia and Africa.