Dr. Vera Songwe is Chair and Founder of the Liquidity and Sustainability Facility. Dr. Songwe is also a senior advisor to the Bank of International Settlements (BIS). she works with the Financial Stability Institute. She is also a visiting senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Dr. Songwe is a global climate champion. She is the Co-Chair of the Independent High Level Expert Panel on Climate Finance, where she has supported the government of the UK and Egypt for COP27 and also for the Egypt and the UAE under COP28 alongside Lord Nick Stern. Under these COP presidencies they wrote the Songwe- Stern report on Climate finance as well the report on Accelerating implementation of Climate Finance. She also co-authored the report Financing nature: a Transformative agenda launched at COP28. Dr. Songwe is a Co-Chair of the Food System Economics Commission, an independent interdisciplinary academic commission that equips political and economic decision makers with tools and evidence to shift food and land use systems.
She is the former United Nations Under-Secretary General and the Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA). In this role she led work on many areas including macroeconomic stability, African Continental Free Trade Agreement, digital Africa, structural transformation, energy and Africa’s response to the Covid pandemic among others.
She has worked with African heads of government, Ministers of Finance and Central Bank governors, international organizations and the private sector on issuance of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), monetary policy, financial innovation and inclusion growth, economic integration and trade, and private sector development. She is a globally recognized and respected leader in her field and has contributed policy advice to many continental leaders and institutional leaders globally. She served as a member of the G20 Indépendent Expert group on MDB reform co-chaired by Larry Summers.