Intervenant

Vera SONGWE

Country Director for Cape Verde, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Mauritania and Senegal - The World Bank

Dr. Songwe is the Country Director for Cape Verde, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Mauritania and Senegal.

She is also a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institute with the Global Economy and Development and Africa Growth Initiative. Her main areas of interest are fiscal policy, innovative financing mechanisms for development, agriculture, energy and economic governance. She is on the Board of Trustees of the African Leadership Network. Prior to that she was a Lead Economist at the World Bank and the Advisor to Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Managing Director who oversaw the World Bank Operations in the Africa, Europe and Central Asia and South Asia regions, as well as Human Resources. She is a member of the World Bank Group team that recently 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. Prior to this, she worked in the East Asia and Pacific Region’s – Poverty Reduction and Economic Management unit, as Country Sector Coordinator and Senior Economist for the Philippines, where she led the dialogue on macroeconomic, fiscal policy and governance issues. She has worked in Mongolia, Cambodia and Morocco managing different World Bank programs and the economic and growth policy dialogue. Prior to joining the Bank, Dr. Songwe was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Southern California and at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, USA. She has published articles on governance, fiscal policy, agriculture and commodity price volatility and trade. Dr. Songwe holds a PhD. in Mathematical Economics from the Center for Operations Research & Econometrics from the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve in Belgium. She holds a BA in Economics and a BA in Political Science from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.