Post by Nejib Ben-Khedher

I lost my father a week ago. I know this is not the usual territory for LinkedIn. But I also know that some lives deserve to be witnessed beyond the circles that loved them and my father's was one of those lives. He was Mohamed Ben Khedher. Born into poverty in the small town of Jemmal, Tunisia. One of the first generation of Tunisian engineers to study abroad immediately after independence. He came back a valedictorian and spent the next two decades building a country from the ground up: food sovereignty, modern fisheries, the first agricultural extension programmes, water policy. He represented Tunisia at the United Nations. He roamed the world to build bilateral relations for his nascent country. He then served seven West African nations as the FAO's highest-ranking representative. He celebrated the first civil marriage in his town, with a woman who had studied in a boys' lycée because that was the only school that would take her. He was a champion of women's education and rights — in the early years of independence and across every generation of his own family: his wife, his daughter, and five granddaughters who carried the torch forward, to his immense pride and happiness. He had a smile that radiate. He kept it to the very end. Even in his last years, when his body was in pain and the world had narrowed around him, that smile never left. He remained a beacon of positivity, refusing to burden those he loved with his suffering, choosing instead to give them warmth, humour, and the quiet reassurance that everything was going to be all right. It was, perhaps, his greatest act of love. I have put together a tribute to him, part professional records, part personal portrait. It is more personal than anything I would normally share here. But I believe it goes beyond the personal: it is a document about what genuine public service looks like, about what it means to build a nation and still come home and be a father, a grandfather to six grandchildren who lit up every time he walked in. He was my beacon. Professionally, as a father, and in every value I have tried to carry forward. If you knew him, I hope this does him justice. If you didn't, I hope it gives you something worth holding onto.