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 (ECA) at the level of Under-Secretary-General. Songwe currently serves as a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution's Africa Growth Initiative.