Vera Songwe is a Cameroonian economist and banking executive who has worked for the World Bank since 1998, and in 2015 became Western and Central Africa's regional director for the International Finance Corporation. In 2017 Songwe was appointed by United Nations Secretary General António Guterres as the ninth Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the first female in history to hold this position.Forbes listed her in 2013 as one of the "20 Young Power Women in Africa", and the following year the Institut Choiseul for International Politics and Geoeconomics chose her as one of their "African leaders of tomorrow". Wikipedia