ANKARA, June 16, 2009 – Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Managing Director of the World Bank is visiting Turkey on June 18-20, 2009. During her visit, she will address the TÜSIAD High Advisory Council and meet with the Turkish Government, as well as with representatives of the private sector, academia and civil society.
Dr. Okonjo-Iweala’s visit will focus on the state of the world economy and the impact of the global financial crisis, economic and social developments in Turkey, the Government’s near and medium term program, and the ongoing close partnership between Turkey and the World Bank Group. She will also pay a site visit to an innovative private sector renewable energy project financed with World Bank resources.
Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is currently Managing Director of the World Bank. Earlier she was Minister of Finance and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Nigeria. As Minister of Finance, she spearheaded negotiations with the Paris Club of Creditors that led to the cancellation of US$18 billion or 60 percent of Nigeria’s external debt.
Dr. Okonjo-Iweala is a member or chair of numerous boards and advisory groups, including the ONE Campaign, the World Resources Institute, the Rockefeller Foundation, the African Institutes of Science and Technology as well as the Center for Global Development (CGD). She has served on the advisory board of the Clinton Global Initiative and as adviser to several international investment groups working in emerging markets. She has lectured extensively all over the world on development issues especially on Africa. Dr. Okonjo-Iweala was the founder of the first ever indigenous opinion research organization in Nigeria (NOI-Gallup Polls). She was co-founder of the Makeda Fund, a US$50 million private equity fund that invests in women-owned small and medium enterprises in Africa. She founded the Center for the Study of Economies of Africa (C-SEA), a development research think-tank based in Abuja, Nigeria. She was recently named a member of the Danish-Government led Commission on Africa and a member of the World Economic Forum Global Leadership Council on Transparency and Corruption. She is also a member of the renowned Commission on World Growth led by Nobel Prize winner, Professor Michael Spence.
Dr. Okonjo-Iweala was educated at Harvard University and has a PhD in Regional Economics and Development from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including Honorary Doctorates from Trinity College, Dublin and Brown University, USA, among others. She is the recipient of Time Magazine’s European Hero of the Year Award, 2004, for her work on economic reform in Nigeria, Euromoney Magazine Global Finance Minister of the year, 2005, Financial Times/The Banker African Finance Minister of the year 2005, This Day (Nigeria’s premier newspaper) Minister of the Year award 2004 and 2005. In 2006, she was named by Forbes Magazine as one of 100 most powerful women in the world. She has been profiled in the Conde Nast International Business Intelligence Magazine Portfolio as one of 73 “Brilliant” business influencers in the world.
