Dr. Vera Songwe

Vera Songwe is Chair of the Liquidity and Sustainability Facility. Songwe is co-chair of the High-Level Panel on Climate Finance. She was previously the Under-Secretary General at the United Nations and Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. She is a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Songwe has been recognized as one of Africa’s 100 most influential people in 2020. She recently co-authored a book entitled “Régional Integration in West Africa: Is There a Role for a Single Currency? “with Eswar Prasad.  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 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 fiscal and monetary policy, innovative financing mechanisms for development, 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.