Xavier Furtado is the Senior Operations Officer for the World Bank's fragility, conflict, and violence theme. He first joined the World Bank Group on a short secondment from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) in 2001 as an economist in the World Bank Institute, and then again in 2010 as the head of the Protection of Basic Services (PBS) Secretariat in Ethiopia, one of IDA’s largest operations at the time.

In 2014 he became the Bank’s Country Representative to Sudan where he led the growth of the Bank’s trust-funded portfolio, gave it a stronger strategic focus, as well as facilitated the significant expansion of IFC’s advisory service portfolio. In September 2017 he was appointed as Country Representative to Botswana and Special Envoy to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) where he led efforts to strengthen the World Bank’s project and reimbursable advisory service portfolios, actively facilitated IFC and MIGA transactions, as well as strengthened WBG support to SADC’s investment climate agenda.

In February 2020, Xavier was based in Washington where he is part of the management team covering Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, and Uganda. Prior to joining the Bank, Xavier worked at CIDA (including postings to Ethiopia and Pakistan), De La Salle University (Manila), the Asian Institute of Management, the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council Trade Policy Forum, and the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada.