Mrs. Marie-Laure Akin-Olugbade is the Vice-President for the Regional Development, Integration and Business Delivery Complex at the African Development Bank. She oversees the Bank’s lending program and over $50 billion portfolio across its five regional hubs and over 30 country offices and provides strategic leadership on the Bank’s work on fragility and regional integration.

Mrs. Akin-Olugbade is a seasoned and results-oriented senior executive with close to 20 years of experience delivering technical, managerial, and strategic knowledge and leadership, in capital markets, treasury, asset management, product development, policy, debt management, business development and delivery at country and regional levels. She rose progressively through the ranks at the African Development Bank, having joined as Finance Assistant, and moved up as Investment Officer, Principal Financial Analyst and Manager of the Financial Technical Services Division. After close to 2 years in Finance, she was appointed as Country Manager for the Ghana Country Office, and served as Deputy, Director General then Director General of the West Africa Business Development and Service Delivery Office.

Mrs. Akin-Olugbade has demonstrated a strong capacity to lead high performing teams and to conduct high level dialogue at country and regional levels, while leveraging partnerships, structuring effective co-financing arrangements, promoting the use of innovative financial instruments for sovereign and non-sovereign clients, and providing cutting-edge knowledge and technical assistance services. She led the development and implementation of transformative strategies, programmes and transactions responsive to clients evolving needs, which positioned the Bank as the “Solutions Bank”. Under her leadership as Director-General of the West Africa region, oversaw the accelerated delivery of results on the $9 billion West Africa portfolio.

Mrs. Akin-Olugbade is a graduate of Université Paris-Dauphine and Université Panthéon-Sorbonne in France, where she respectively obtained a master’s degree in applied economics and a Postgraduate Diploma in Management.