| Intro | World Bank Economist and Banking Director |
| Is | Economist |
| From | Cameroon |
| Type | Finance |
| Gender | female |
Vera Songwe is a Cameroonian economist and banking executive who has worked for the World Bank since 1998, and in 2015 became Western and Central Africa’s regional director for the International Finance Corporation.
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”.
Early life and education
Songwe grew up in Bamenda, in the north of Cameroon, where she attended Our Ladies of Lourdes College, a private Catholic school, and thus formed part of the local English-speaking elite. She obtained her PhD in mathematical economics at the Université catholique de Louvain, in Belgium, and afterward migrated to the United States, where she worked at the University of Michigan for three years.
Career
Early career
She accepted a position working for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, and simultaneously had a visiting professor’s appointment at the University of Southern California. In 1998 she joined the World Bank, where she worked in the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (PREM) unit, covering Morocco and Tunisia. Over the subsequent years, she filled several roles in the PREM unit for East Asia and the Pacific region.
Later career
From 2011 to 2015 she was operations manager for the World Bank in Cape Verde, the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and Mauritania. In July 2015 she was appointed Regional Director of the International Finance Corporation for West and Central Africa.
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 2014, African Business Review described her as one of the “Top 10 Female Business Leaders in Africa. In 2015 she collaborated with the newly founded Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Programme, which pledged $100 million for African start-up companies.