Event Summary
The Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) and the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) cohosted an event on October 8, 2014, featuring Suma Chakrabarti, president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and Donald P. Kaberuka, president of the African Development Bank. Chakrabarti and Kaberuka discussed the changing shape of existing development and infrastructure banks and new approaches they are adopting in response to shifts in the multilateral balance of economics and politics. Domenico Lombardi, director of CIGI's Global Economy Program, and PIIE Senior Fellow Simon Johnson discussed the presentations.
Suma Chakrabarti has been president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development since 2012. Previously, he served as permanent secretary at the British Ministry of Justice and as head of the United Kingdom's Department of International Development. In the late 1990s, he worked in the UK Treasury, where he was eventually promoted to the Cabinet Office and managed cross-departmental strategic issues. He earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy, politics, and economics from New College, Oxford, and a master's degree in economics from the University of Sussex.
Donald P. Kaberuka has served as president of the African Development Bank since 2005 and also serves as its chairman of the Board. Prior to being elected as president to the African Development Bank, Kaberuka was Rwanda's minister of finance and economic planning. He studied at the University of Dar es Salaam as an undergraduate and obtained his MPhil in development studies from the University of East Anglia. He received his PhD in economics from the University of Glasgow.
Domenico Lombardi is a member of the Financial Times Forum of Economists and editor of the World Economics Journal. Formerly, he was a senior scholar at the Brookings Institution and an executive board member of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
PIIE Senior Fellow Simon Johnson is also the Ronald A. Kurtz Professor of Entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management and served as chief economist of the International Monetary Fund from 2007–08.