Quick verdict: who Waleed Al-Khereiji is
Waleed Al-Khereiji is a Saudi engineer who became Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs on July 15, 2020. That single line hides the more interesting part of the story: most of his earlier career sat in agriculture, food security and grain trade, not diplomacy.
His full name is Waleed Bin Abdulkarim Al-Khereiji. He holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Miami in Florida.
Career snapshot
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Current position | Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs |
| Appointed | July 15, 2020 |
| Qualification | Bachelor’s in civil engineering, University of Miami |
| Earlier roles | Minister of Agriculture, Director General of the grain silos organization, President of the International Grains Council |
Waleed Al-Khereiji and the move from agriculture to diplomacy
He was appointed Minister of Agriculture on December 8, 2014, at the body now known as the Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture. Before that, he ran the General Organization for Grain Silos and Flour Mills, today the General Food Security Authority.
He also chaired the International Grains Council for the 2014/2015 term. Food security is diplomacy by another name, so the later transfer to foreign affairs is less of a jump than it first looks. Readers tracking other senior appointments can compare his path with that of Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan.
Ambassadorial service under Waleed Al-Khereiji
He served as ambassador of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques to Turkey, and earlier to the Netherlands, where he was also the Kingdom’s permanent representative to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
He led the Saudi delegation to the Conferences of the States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention from the eighth through the eleventh sessions, held in The Hague. Details of those sessions are published by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
Regional and international roles
Earlier in his career he was Director General of Agriculture and Water in Makkah Al-Mukarramah Province and a member of the Jeddah Governorate Council. He chaired the Permanent Committee for Agricultural Research and Guidance in the same province and served as deputy chairman of its Economic Development Committee. For context on that region, see the guide to Makkah Al-Mukarramah Province.
Internationally, he acted as the Kingdom’s executive director at the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Program, headed the Saudi delegation in consultations for the fourth replenishment of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, and represented the Kingdom to the International Criminal Court.
Board memberships
He has sat on several boards, including the Saudi Agricultural and Livestock Investment Company, known as SALIC, and served on the preparatory committee of the Ministerial Supply Committee. Those seats connect directly to the Kingdom’s food import strategy, a theme that also runs through Saudi food aid shipments abroad and the work of other Saudi ministries.
Why the profile matters
Deputy ministers rarely make headlines, yet they set the working rhythm of a ministry. His mix of technical training, commodity markets and multilateral negotiation is unusual in a foreign ministry, and it explains his placement. For the wider institutional picture, readers often start with the history of Saudi Arabia, then move to current bodies such as the Ministry of Economy and Planning and the Ministry of Culture.
Final verdict
Waleed Al-Khereiji’s record reads as a career built on resource security first and protocol second. That background is now applied inside the foreign ministry and it is the clearest lens for understanding the file he handles.
