Vera Songwe | |
---|---|
United Nations Under Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) | |
In office August 2017 –August 2022 | |
Secretary-General | |
Regional Director of West and Central Africa for the International Finance Corporation (IFC) | |
In office July 2015 –August 2017 | |
Personal details | |
Nationality | Cameroon |
Alma mater | UniversitéCatholique de Louvain (PhD) (MA) University of Michigan (BA) |
Occupation | Economist and Banker |
Vera Songwe is an economist and banking executive from Cameroon who worked for the World Bank from 1998-2015,and in 2015-2017 served as Western and Central Africa's regional director for the International Finance Corporation. [1] [2] She was the first woman to head the U.N.'s Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) at the level of Under Secretary-General. [3] Songwe currently[ when? ] serves as a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution's Africa Growth Initiative. [4]
Songwe holds a PhD in Mathematical Economics from the Center for Operations Research and Econometrics and a Master of Arts in Law and Economics and a Diplôme d’études approfondies in Economic Science and Politics from the UniversitéCatholique de Louvain in Belgium. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and Political Science from the University of Michigan. [5]
Songwe worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis,and simultaneously had a visiting professor's appointment at the University of Southern California.[ citation needed ]
In 1998,Songwe joined the World Bank,where she worked in the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (PREM) unit,covering Morocco and Tunisia. [6] [7] Over the subsequent years,she filled several roles in the PREM unit for East Asia and the Pacific region. [7] In 2010,Songwe was part of the World Bank Group team that raised a historic US$49.3 billion dollars in concessional financing for the low income countries of the world as part of the International Development Association (IDA)] 16th replenishment. [8]
From 2011 to 2015,Songwe was Regional Director Africa covering West and Central Africa for the International Finance Corporation (IFC),and Country Director for Senegal,Cape Verde,The Gambia,Guinea Bissau,and Mauritania. [9] Her main areas of interest are fiscal policy,innovative financing mechanisms for development,agriculture,energy and economic governance. [8]
In 2011,Songwe was involved in Africa 2.0,an initiative to bring young Africans together to aid in the continent's economic development. [10] She is a scholar at the Brookings Institution, [11] at its Africa Growth Initiative. [12] Forbes listed her in 2013 as one of the "20 Young Power Women in Africa", [13] and the following year the Institut Choiseul for International Politics and Geoeconomics chose her as one of their "African leaders of tomorrow". [14] In 2015 she collaborated with the newly-founded Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Programme,which pledged $100 million for African start-up companies. [15]
In July 2015,Songwe was appointed Regional Director of the IFC for West and Central Africa. [7]
Songwe took up her role as the Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) on 3 August 2017 at the level of Under Secretary-General. [5]
In June 2020,Songwe and others –Nobel laureates in Economics,architects,chefs and leaders of international organizations –signed the appeal in favour of the purple economy ("Towards a cultural renaissance of the economy"),published in Corriere della Sera , [16] El País [17] and Le Monde . [18]
On 22 August 2022,Songewe announced her resignation from UNECA. [19]
She is also a member of the African Union Institutional reform team under the direction of the President of Rwanda,Paul Kagame,and a board member of the African Leadership Network,the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, [5] and ID4Africa. [20]
In early 2021,Songwe was appointed by the G20 to the High Level Independent Panel (HLIP) on financing the global commons for pandemic preparedness and response,co-chaired by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala,Tharman Shanmugaratnam and Lawrence Summers. [21]
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