Dr. Vera Songwe

Vera Songwe is Chair of the Liquidity and Sustainability Facility. Songwe is co-chair of the High Level Panel on Finance for Climate Action. She is a member of the Global Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ).   She is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.  Songwe was previously Under-Secretary-General at the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. Songwe has been recognized as one of Africa’s 100 most influential people in 2022 and was a recipient of the All Africa Continental Leadership Award, Songwe was named one of the nominees for Forbes Africa 50 Top Women in 2023. She recently co-authored a book entitled “ Régional Integration in West Africa: Is There a Role for a Single Currency? 

She has spent the last three years championing the cause for additional liquidity for emerging markets and the need for a new global financial architecture fit for the 21st century’s development challenges. 

She has held a number of senior positions at the World Bank, and the International Finance Corporation. Her main areas of interest are financial stability, macro-prudential policy, fiscal and monetary policy, innovative financing mechanisms for development, climate finance, agriculture, energy, and economic governance. She has extensive experience working in Africa, East Asia, Europe and Central Asia and South Asia regions.

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. 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.