Vera Songwe


Vera Songwe is an economist and banking executive from Cameroon who worked for the World Bank from 1998 to 2015, and in 2015–2017 served as Western and Central Africa's regional director for the International Finance Corporation. She was the first woman to head the UN's Economic Commission for Africa at the level of Under-Secretary-General. Songwe currently serves as a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution's Africa Growth Initiative.

Early life and education

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 Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and Political Science from the University of Michigan.

Career

Songwe worked for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, and simultaneously had a visiting professor's appointment at the University of Southern California.
In 1998, Songwe joined the World Bank, where she worked in the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management unit, covering Morocco and Tunisia. Over the subsequent years, she filled several roles in the PREM unit for East Asia and the Pacific region. 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 16th replenishment.
From 2011 to 2015, Songwe was Regional Director Africa covering West and Central Africa for the International Finance Corporation, and Country Director for Senegal, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Guinea Bissau, and Mauritania. Her main areas of interest are fiscal policy, innovative financing mechanisms for development, agriculture, energy and economic governance.
In 2011, Songwe was involved in Africa 2.0, an initiative to bring young Africans together to aid in the continent's economic development. She is a scholar at the Brookings Institution, at its Africa Growth Initiative. Forbes listed her in 2013 as one of the "20 Young Power Women in Africa", and the following year the Institut Choiseul for International Politics and Geoeconomics chose her as one of their "African leaders of tomorrow". In 2015 she collaborated with the newly-founded Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Programme, which pledged $100 million for African start-up companies.
In July 2015, Songwe was appointed Regional Director of the IFC for West and Central Africa.
Songwe took up her role as the Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa on 3 August 2017 at the level of Under-Secretary-General.
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, published in Corriere della Sera, El País and Le Monde.
On 22 August 2022, Songewe announced her resignation from UNECA.

Other activities

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, and ID4Africa.
In early 2021, Songwe was appointed by the G20 to the High Level Independent Panel on financing the global commons for pandemic preparedness and response, co-chaired by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Tharman Shanmugaratnam and Lawrence Summers.

Speeches

  1. Statement by the Executive Secretary at the Fourth Conference of Ministers Responsible for Civil Registration, Lusaka, Zambia, 07 December 2017
  2. Statement by the Executive Secretary at the opening of the African Economic Conference, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 04 December 2017
  3. Statement by the Executive Secretary at the opening of the Conference on Land Policy in Africa, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 14 November 2017
  4. Statement by Dr. Vera Songwe, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of the UNECA at the Opening Session of the 18th Executive Council Meeting of the Extraordinary Summit on the African Continental Free Trade Area
  5. Closing the Tech Gender Gap

    Publications

  6. "Winning the Fight against Corruption: A Sustainable Path to Africa's Transformation"

    Featured articles

  22. Identifying and addressing land governance constraints to support intensification and land market operation: Evidence from 10 African countries