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Vera Songwe
She turned Africa's debt and climate grievances into figures that rich-country negotiators now have to answer.
The rise
Born in 1968 in Nairobi to Cameroonian parents from Bamendakwe, she studied economics and politics at Michigan and took a doctorate in mathematical economics at Louvain. She joined the World Bank in 1998, worked on Morocco, Tunisia and East Asia, ran its Senegal office, and from 2015 led the IFC in West and Central Africa.
What they did
Named in April 2017 to head the UN Economic Commission for Africa, the first woman to do so, she pressed for reallocating SDRs to Africa and at COP26 launched the Liquidity and Sustainability Facility to cut African borrowing costs. With Nicholas Stern she co-chairs the panel whose 2022 report put developing countries' climate investment needs, China aside, at $2.4 trillion a year.
The full picture
She left ECA on 1 September 2022, after five years, telling staff only her thanks; neither she nor the UN gave a reason, and an acting head was named. Debt campaigners fault the Liquidity and Sustainability Facility she chairs for offering liquidity rather than relief; it rests on the Eurobond market whose cost she denounces.
Why it matters
She moved the argument about African debt and climate finance from grievance to arithmetic, and put on the table numbers the rich countries' negotiators now have to answer.
“In 2025, sovereign-debt sustainability was largely a matter of luck.”
What citizens said
Afrobarometer Round 9 (2021–2023) — Cameroon
% who say 'trust somewhat' or 'trust a lot' · Afrobarometer Dispatch No. 891