Join us for a special Mother’s Day conversation with AU Special Envoy to mobilise international support for the fight against COVID-19 and WHO Special Envoy for Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
Mothers around the world play many roles in their lives and the lives of their children. In celebration of the diversity that exists within motherhood, join The Africa Center’s CEO, Uzodinma Iweala, for an intimate conversation with his mother, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, about African resilience during this unprecedented time. Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala will give context to the economic specifics of the spread of COVID-19 across Africa, share African responses to the pandemic, and her projections for Africa’s future. The two will weave into this macro-level discussion their personal reflections on our new reality and what it means to them, their loved ones, and the African continent. The conversation will be followed by a Q&A with viewers.
About the Speaker
Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is an 
economist and international development expert with over 30 years of experience. She is Chair of the Board of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and of the African Risk Capacity (ARC). She is Co-Chair of The Global Commission on the Economy and Climate and also Co-Chair of the Board of Lumos, a small-cap renewable energy company. She also sits on the Boards of Standard Chartered PLC and Twitter Inc. She was recently appointed as AU Special Envoy to mobilise International support for the fight against COVID-19 and WHO Special Envoy for Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator.
Previously, Dr. Okonjo-Iweala was a Senior Advisor at Lazard from September 2015 – October 2019. She served twice as Nigeria’s Finance Minister, from 2003-2006, 2011-2015, and briefly as Foreign Minister, the first woman to hold both positions. She spent a 25-year career at the World Bank as a development economist, rising to the No.2 position of Managing Director, overseeing an $81 billion operational portfolio in Africa, South Asia, Europe and Central Asia.
Dr. Okonjo-Iweala has been ranked by Fortune as one of the 50 Greatest World Leaders in 2015, by Forbes as one of the Top 100 Most Powerful Women in the World consecutively for four years, by Time as one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2014, and by the UK Guardian as one of the Top 100 Women in the World in 2011.
Dr. Okonjo-Iweala holds a Bachelor’s in Economics from Harvard University and a PhD in Regional Economics and Development from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is an Angelopoulos Global Public Leader at Harvard University Kennedy School, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has received over fifteen honorary degrees, including from Yale University, the University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, Tel Aviv University and Trinity College, Dublin. She is the author of numerous articles on finance and development, and several books including Fighting Corruption is Dangerous: The Story Behind the Headlines (MIT Press, 2018) and Reforming the Unreformable: Lessons from Nigeria (MIT Press, 2012).