Panelists, Biographies
Paul Kagame has been serving as the President of the Republic of Rwanda since 2003, when he won the country’s first ever democratic elections. He was elected to a second seven-year mandate in August 2010. President Kagamehad beenworking as Vice-President and Minister for Defense in the Government of National Unity since 1994, following four years of fighting as the Head of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, which marked the end of the Rwandan genocide. President Kagame currently serves as Chair of the UN Secretary General's Advisory Group on the Millennium Development Goals and as Co-chair of theInternational Telecommunication Union’s Broadband Commission.
Olusegun Obasanjo served as President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria from 1999 until 2007. Upon leaving office, he oversaw the first civilian handover of power in Nigeria from one democratically elected leader to another.Former PresidentObasanjo has played a pivotal role in the regeneration and repositioning of the African Union through the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) and New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). He has served as Chairman of the Group of 77, Chairman of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, and Chairman of the African Heads of State and Government Implementation Committee on NEPAD. Former PresidentObasanjo was also involved in international mediation efforts in Namibia, Angola, South Africa, Mozambique and Burundi. In 2008, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon appointed him as Special Envoy on the Great Lakes region. Former PresidentObasanjo is currently involved in mediation efforts in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Helen Clark became the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme in April 2009, and is the first woman to lead the organization. She is also the Chair of the United Nations Development Group, a committee consisting of the heads of all UN funds, programmes and departments working on development issues. Prior to her appointment with UNDP, Helen Clark served for nine years as Prime Minister of New Zealand, serving three successive terms from 1999 - 2008. Throughout her tenure as Prime Minister, Helen Clark engaged widely in policy development and advocacy across the international, economic, social and cultural spheres. Under her leadership, New Zealand achieved significant economic growth, low levels of unemployment, and high levels of investment in education and health, and in the well-being of families and older citizens. She and her government prioritized reconciliation and the settlement of historical grievances with New Zealand’s indigenous people and the development of an inclusive multicultural and multi-faith society.
Tegegnework Gettu heads the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Africa Bureau in addition to serving as Assistant Administrator of UNDP and Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations. Mr. Gettu has been in his current position since February 2009. His diverse career spans UNDP, academia, government and the private sector. Mr. Gettu served as Chief of Staff and Director of UNDP’s Executive Office (2006-2009). From 2003 until 2006 he was the UN Resident Coordinator/UNDP Resident Representative in Nigeria. Prior to 2003, Mr. Gettu was the Country Director for Southern Africa and Indian Ocean countries and Acting Resident Representative in Liberia and Sierra Leone. During his academic career, he was a fellow to Columbia University; Assistant Professor and Lecturer at the University of Rochester in New York, Hunter College and Addis Ababa University. He has also worked in Ethiopia’s Ministry of Planning and Economic Development and the private sector.
Donald Kaberuka is currently serving his second five-year term as President of the African Development Bank Group (AfDB). He was first elected in 2005, becoming the seventh president of the Bank Group since its establishment in 1963.He was re-elected in May 2010 at the AfDB’s headquarters in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, for a second five-year term.Before joining the African Development Bank, Mr. Kaberuka, 60, had a distinguished career in banking, international trade and development and government service. A national of Rwanda, he was the country’s Minister of Finance and Economic Planning between 1997 and 2005. During this period, he oversaw Rwanda’s successful economic reconstruction after the end of the civil war there.During his service at the AfDB, Mr.Kaberuka has presided over a major redirection in its strategy for development and poverty reduction in Africa. To that end, the AfDB has placed increased emphasis on the private sector, and on the importance of major infrastructure developments in areas such as road, railways, power plants and communications, especially in their role in promoting regional integration in Africa.
Joaquim Rafael Branco served as the Prime Minister of Sao Tomé between 2008 and 2010 and held various ministerial portfolios prior to, including infrastructure, natural resources, foreign affairs and finance. Between 1984 and 1996, Former Prime MinisterBranco also served as Sao Tome’s Ambassador to Brazil, the United States and as Permanent Representative to the United Nations. In addition, he is the founder of Sao Tome and Principe’s first private, post-independence newspaper. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in International Relations from Hunter College, USA and a Post-graduate Degree in Business and Public Administration from Portugal.
John Rwangombwa was appointed Minister of Finance and Economic Planning of Rwanda in 2009. Prior to his appointment, he served as the Permanent Secretary and Secretary to the Treasury in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning. Before that, he served in various departments at the same Ministry where he helped set up the Accountant General’s Office and oversaw the implementation of several reforms related to Public Financial Management. He also previously worked as Deputy Director of Customs in Rwanda Revenue Authority. Mr.Rwangombwa holds a Master’s Degree from the Maastricht School of Management, Netherlands.
Claver Gatete is the Governor of the National Bank of Rwanda. Prior to his appointment, he held the post of Deputy Governor from December 2009. Mr. Gatete joined the National Bank of Rwanda from the United Kingdom where he was Rwanda’s Ambassador to the UK, Ireland and Iceland, a position he held from November 2005 to December 2009. From November 2003 to September 2005, Mr. Gatete was the Secretary General and Secretary to the Treasury in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning. From October 2001 to May 2005, he worked in the Office of the President as a Personal Representative of the President on theNEPAD Steering Committee; Coordinator of the National African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM), member of the APR National Commission; and Member of the NEPAD’s African Partnership Forum (APF).
Antonio Pedro is the Director of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA)’s Sub-Regional Office for East Africa. A mineral exploration geologist, he has held several managerial and leadership positions nationally and regionally, including as Director-General of a sub-regional research centre in Tanzania (Southern and Eastern Africa Mineral Centre) and several state-owned mining companies in Mozambique. Mr. Pedro joined ECA in 2001. At the time of his appointment as the new Director of ECA’s Sub-Regional office for East Africa, Antonio Pedro was Chief of the Infrastructure and Natural Resources Development Section at ECA’s headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Louise Mushikiwabo is the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of the Republic of Rwanda. She previously served as the Minister of Information in the Government of Rwanda. She is an author and public relations executive who has lived in the United States for 22 years, then briefly in Tunisia, before joining the Rwandan Cabinet in March 2008. Ms. Mushikiwabo is the co-author of “Rwanda Means the Universe”, an account of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
Hlengiwe Mkhize has been serving as the Deputy Minister of Economic Development of the Republic of South Africa since 12 June 2012. She has served as a Member of Parliament since 2009. She is a founder member and a trustee of the Children and Violence Trust since 1995 and she has been a trustee of the Malibongwe Business Trust from 2005. She a Chairperson of the Peace Commission of the South African Women in Dialogue since 2004; she also a Treasurer General of the African National Congress (ANC) Women's League (WL) and became the member of the National Executive Committee of the WL since 2008.
Ramakrishna Sithanen is the Chairman and Director, International Financial Services (IFS) Ltd. IFS is a leading management company incorporated in Mauritius and licensed by the Financial Services Commission (FSC) to provide advisory and management services for international businesses. It is also a member firm of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales as well as a Platinum Member of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (UK). Mr. Sithanen is a former finance minister and Vice-Prime Minister of Mauritius between 1991 and 1995, when Sir AneroodJugnauth was Prime Minister and from 2005 to 2010, under NavinRamgoolam's Cabinet.
Mwangi Kimenyi is Senior Fellow and Director of the Africa Growth Initiative in the Global Economy and Development program of The Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. He has been a faculty member of the Department of Economics at the University of Mississippi and the University of Connecticut and is the Founding Executive Director of the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis (KIPPRA). Mr. Kimenyi is also a Research Associate with the Center for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford, U.K. He has been a visiting Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Mwangi Kimenyi also served as member of the Board of Directors of Equity Bank, Kenya.
Akbar Noman is an economist with wide-ranging experience of policy analysis and formulation in a variety of developing and transition economies, having worked extensively for the World Bank as well as other international organizations and at senior levels of government. He combines teaching at SIPA with being a Senior Fellow at the Initiative for Policy Dialogue - a "think tank" headed by Joseph Stiglitz at Columbia University - where his tasks continue to include policy work with governments. His other academic appointments have been at Oxford University (where he was also a student) and the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex.
Roger Nord currently serves as Deputy Director, IMF Africa Department.Previously, he worked as a senior advisor at the department, where he headed missions to Cameroon, Gabon, Tanzania, and Uganda. He has served as Division Chief of the Surveillance Policy Division in what is now the Strategy, Policy and Review Department, and an Advisor to former Managing Director Horst Köhler. From 1998-2002, he was the IMF’s regional representative in Central Europe, based in Budapest.
Louis Kasekende is Deputy Governor at the Bank of Uganda, reverted to the position in January 2010.He served at the African Development Bank as Chief Economist, a position he held for three and a half years. Previously he served as Alternate Executive Director and later as Executive Director at the World Bank for Africa Group 1, including 22 countries mostly from anglophone Sub-Saharan Africa. Prior to joining the World Bank, he served as Deputy Governor at the Bank of Uganda from 1999 to 2002; Executive Director Research and Policy at the Bank of Uganda from 1994 to 1999; Director of the Research Department at the Bank of Uganda from 1992 to 1994. After completing his studies at Makerere University, he tutored at the University before proceeding for his post-graduate studies at the University of Manchester. He is a member of the United Nations Group of Eminent Persons for the Least Developed Countries and was recently appointed to the Financial Stability Board taskforce on Emerging Markets and Developing Economies. He is also a member of the World Bank Knowledge Advisory Commission.
Victor Murinde is the Director of the African Development Institute at the African Development Bank. Prior to joining the Bank, he worked as Professor of Development Finance at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom, for 15 years. He holds a BA (Economics) from Makerere University, an MSc (Banking & Finance) and a PhD (Financial Economics) from the University of Wales, Cardiff; and a DoctorisHonorisCausa from Tallinn University of Technology.
Pedro Conceição is Chief Economist and Head of the Strategic and Advisory Unit of UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Africa. He previously served as Director of UNDP’s Office of Development Studies, where he worked on the impact of the global economic crisis on developing countries, the food crisis, climate change and development, and the evolution of income distribution in the developing world. Earlier work on financing for development and on global public goods was published by Oxford University Press in books he co-edited (The New Public Finance: Responding to Global Challenges, 2006; Providing Global Public Goods: Managing Globalization, 2003). He has published, amongst others journals, in the Review of Development Economics, Eastern Economic Journal, Ecological Economics, and Technological Forecasting and Social Change. He was deputy director of the office from 2001 to 2005. Previously, he was an assistant professor at the Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal, teaching and researching on science, technology and innovation policy.
Mthuli Ncube is the Chief Economist and Vice President of the African Development Bank, and holds a PhD in Mathematical Finance from Cambridge University, UK, on “Pricing Options under Stochastic Volatility”. As Chief Economist, he oversees the Economics Complex, which is focused on the process of knowledge management within the bank and with its partners, and general economic strategic direction of the bank. In this regard, he looks after the Development Research Division, Statistics Division and African Development Institute, all of which are headed by Directors who report to him.Before joining the Bank, he held the post of Dean of the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, South Africa. Mr. Ncube also served as a regulator, and served as a Board member of the South African Financial Services Board (FSB), which regulates non-bank financial institutions in South Africa. He is also Chairman of the Board of the African Economic Research Consortium, a network that develops economists in Africa, with which he has been associated for the last 20 years.
Emmanuel Nnadozie is Director of the Economic Development and NEPAD Division of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) which he joined in 2004 as Senior Economic Affairs Officer. Before joining ECA in 2004, he was Professor of Economics at Truman State University in Missouri, United Sates. His main areas of fous include, macroeconomic policy, finance, regional integration and economic governance and he has worked in African regional development issues, including, NEPAD, MDGs, poverty reduction, Climate Change, African Peer Review Mechanism as well as with the regional and subregional institutions: African Union and the Regional Economic Communities. In 1994, he was a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, Centre for the Study of African Economies, and in 1996, visiting professor of economics and African Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His scholarly works have appeared in both academic and non-academic journals worldwide.
Shantayanan Devarajan is the Chief Economist of the World Bank’s Africa Region. Since joining the World Bank in 1991, he has worked as Principal Economist at the Development Research Group and Chief Economist of the Human Development Network. He was the Director of the World Development Report 2004. Before 1991, Mr.Devarajan servedas faculty member of Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. The author or co-author of over 100 publications, Mr. Devarajan’s research covers public economics, trade policy, natural resources and the environment, and general equilibrium modeling in developing countries. Born in Sri Lanka, Mr. Devarajan received his B.A. in mathematics from Princeton University and his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.
William Kalema provides advisory services to investors, firms, and governments on business development in Africa. He currently serves as the Country Managing Director of BDO East Africa in Uganda. BDO East Africa, a member firm of BDO International, provides audit, tax, and business advisory, and financial management services through offices in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. Mr. Kalema has extensive experience in the area of financial sectors and mechanisms, serving as the Director of a series of funds investing in agricultural enterprises in East Africa, such as the African Agricultural Fund. Mr. Kalema is also involved with several non-profit organizations and foundations whose mission is development in Africa through the promotion of private enterprise-based solutions, including The Uganda Gatsby Trust, Kilimo Trust, Shell Foundation, and the Investment Climate Facility for Africa (ICF).
William Lyakurwa is the Executive Director of the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC). He previously served as Senior Trade Promotion Advisor atthe Geneva-based International Trade Centre. Mr. Lyakurwa has served as Chair and member of several policy-making Boards in Tanzania and internationally and is currently the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Tanzania Investment Bank.Mr. Lyakurwa has published extensively in local and international journals as well as contributed chapters in books, research and discussion papers. Mr. Lyakurwa received holds a PhD from Cornell University.
Charles Soludo is a Nigerian economics professor and has served as Governor and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Central Bank of Nigeria, as well as founder and founding Chairman of the Africa Finance Corporation (AFC). For his achievements at the Central Bank, the FT-Banker named him the Global and African Central Bank Governor of the year 2006. Prior to his May 2004 appointment to the Central Bank, he served as Chief Economic Adviser to former President Obasanjo and Chief Executive of the National Planning Commission of Nigeria. He has also worked as visiting scholar and consultant to about 18 international organizations, including The World Bank, the IMF, OECD, UNDP, etc. During the global financial crisis, he was a member of the Commission of Experts appointed by the UN-General Assembly on Reforming the international financial and monetary system (the Stiglitz Commission). He has for several years served as member of the Chief Economist's Advisory Council, the World Bank.
Arend van Wamelen is a Partner in McKinsey & Company’s Johannesburg office. Since joining McKinsey in 2001, Arend has worked extensively in the Consumer, Oil and Gas and on knowledge and research development in Africa, including in the consumer finance, consumer goods, retail and industrial sectors on strategy, sales force, distribution, customer segmentation and operations improvement sectors. Arend co-authored the recently published report, Africa at work: Job creation and Inclusive Growth. In addition to client work, Arend was one of the authors of the much publicised McKinsey report, Lions on the Move: the Progress and the Potential of African Economies. Arend also leads the McKinsey-proprietary ‘How Half the World Shops’ consumer research initiative for South Africa. ‘How Half the World Shops’ is an internal McKinsey research project aimed at developing a distinctive understanding of shopping behaviour in the low and middle income market segments in major developing countries.
Heba Handoussa is managing director of the Economic Research Forum for the Arab Countries, Iran and Turkey (ERF), a non-government, non-profit institution established in 1993 to promote policy-relevant research on the MENA region. Professor Handoussa obtained her Ph.D. in Economics from the University of London in 1974 and taught at the American University in Cairo where she was twice elected as Chairperson of the Economics and Political Science Department and subsequently appointed as Vice Provost. She has also served as Advisor to the Egyptian Government and as consultant to the World Bank. Ms.Handoussa is currently a member of the Shura Council, Egypt's Upper House of Parliament. She is also a member of Egypt's National Specialized Councils which report directly to the President. She is also a member on the Board of the Central Bank of Egypt. She also serves on the Board of international and regional research-related institutions including CEDEJ, IFPRI, UNRISD and sits on the WBI External Advisory Board of the World Bank. She is also a commissioner of the "World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization" of the ILO.
Akere Muna is a Cameroonian Barrister. The founder and former President of Transparency International Cameroon, he is currently Vice-Chair of the International Board Directors of Transparency International. He has served as President of the Cameroon Bar Association and President of the Pan African Lawyers Union (PALU). Mr. Munacurrently serves as the President of the African Union's Economic, Social and Cultural Council (ECOSOCC). In January 2010 he was appointed Member of NEPAD’s Eminent Persons' Panel of the African Peer Review Mechanism.
Kampeta Sayinzoga currently serves as Permanent Secretary and Secretary to the Treasury in the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, Rwanda. She had previously worked as the Government’s Chief Economist from September 2009 to December 2009, designing and implementing macroeconomic policies; coordinatingresource mobilization efforts and all economic policies initiated by other government entities. Prior to this, she had served as Junior Professional Associate in the World Bank’s Rwanda Country Office, where she provided analytical and operational support for the preparation and implementation of Poverty Reduction Support Credits and monitored the progress and design of key priority poverty reduction programmes in health, education, water and sanitation, and energy.
Jeff Koinange is the Chief Anchor and Talk Show host for Kenya’s first ever 24-hour all-news Television station, K24. In its only four-and-a-half years of being on-air, K24 has been honored with several prestigious awards including the CNN/Multichoice African Journalist of the Year award. Jeff was CNN’s Africa Correspondent for six years, responsible for reporting from across the African continent. Since joining CNN in 2001, he covered a wide range of African issues and events. Prior to joining CNN, Jeff worked for Reuters Television from 1995 to 2001, covering the majority of the African continent from bases in Nairobi, Abidjan and Johannesburg. Jeff holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Broadcast Journalism from New York University.