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Hon. Zainab S. Ahmed (Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Nigeria at Federal Republic of Nigeria)

Hon. Zainab S. Ahmed

Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Nigeria at Federal Republic of Nigeria

Mrs. Zainab Shamsuna Ahmed was appointed Minister of Finance, Budget & National Planning on August 21, 2019.

Prior to this, Mrs. Ahmed was Nigeria’s Minister of Finance from September 14, 2018 to May 29, 2019. In this position, her responsibilities included the management and control of Nigeria's public finance, with the specific functions of preparing annual estimates of revenue and expenditure for the Federal Government. She worked closely with leadership of the Central Bank of Nigeria to coordinate the fiscal and monetary policies of the Federal Government of Nigeria. In her capacity as Minister of Finance, Mrs. Ahmed spearheaded the development and launch of the Strategic Revenue Growth Initiatives (SRGI), a cross-agency suite of interventions aimed at boosting revenues in Nigeria. She also launched Project Lighthouse, a data-driven artificial intelligence engine that supports the development of a more efficient revenue assessment methodology that analyses and provides an analytic view of revenue sources across the country, optimizes the collection of those revenues and ensures that major revenue loopholes are plugged and revenue collection is dramatically improved.

Mrs. Ahmed graduated with B.Sc. Accounting from the Prestigious Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, Nigeria and studied for her MBA at the Ogun State University, Ago Iwoye, Nigeria. As a seasoned Accountant, who has served in both the Public and Private Sectors, she brings to bear, in her new role at Nigeria’s Ministry of Finance, Budget & National Planning, her considerable knowledge and experience in Financial Reporting, Public Financial Management, Budget Formulation and Execution, Public Sector Reform, Natural Resource Accountability, National Projects Management, as well as Macroeconomic, Monetary and Fiscal Policy Coordination.

Olivier Eweck (Head of Sub Saharan Africa, Public Sector, Global Corporate Bank at JP Morgan Chase & Co.)

Olivier Eweck

Head of Sub Saharan Africa, Public Sector, Global Corporate Bank at JP Morgan Chase & Co.

In his role, Olivier leads the coverage of public sector entities including central banks, governments, multilateral agencies and policy-oriented financial institutions.

Prior to joining JP Morgan, Olivier was Director for the Syndication and Client Solutions Department of the African Development Bank. He was responsible for co-financing with ECAs, DFIs, international and local commercial banks. He managed the co-financing facilities established by China, Japan, the European Union and Korea. He was also responsible for engineering of financial products, local currency financing, structured finance solutions and balance sheet optimization.

Olivier Eweck holds two Master’s degrees in Applied Mathematics, Finance and Economics from Ecole Polytechnique, and Ecole Nationale Des Ponts et Chaussées, France.

Donna Sims Wilson (Chief Operating Officer at Kah Capital Management)

Donna Sims Wilson

Chief Operating Officer at Kah Capital Management

Donna Sims Wilson is the Chief Operating Officer of Kah Capital Management, an African American owned alternative asset management firm in the mortgage related credit space. From 2014 through April of 2020, she was the President of Smith Graham Investment Advisors, a $6 billion minority-owned asset management firm active in long only debt, equity and alternative strategies. Prior to her foray into asset management, Donna completed a 30 year career as an investment banker where she served in the C-Suite as President, Executive Vice President, ran departments and among other roles was the lead corporate finance professional underwriting hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate and mortgage debt, as well as equity initial and secondary public offerings.

Donna serves as the Immediate Past Chair of the Board of the National Association of Securities Professionals NASP), a trade organization of minorities and women who work on Wall Street primarily in asset management and investment banking. A significant component of the membership is comprised of institutional investors which includes public and corporate pension funds, foundations, endowments and insurance companies. Donna co-founded the NASP Africa Financial Summit in 2015. With subsequent funding from USAID, Mobilizing Institutional Investors to Develop Africa’s Infrastructure (MiDA) was born and has since executed over $1
billion in African infrastructure investments from U.S. institutions. Donna’s leadership in ideating and launching these successful endeavors served as a precursor to her participation in leading a delegation of U.S. pension funds and foundations to the 2018 G20 Buenos Aires summit to educate global institutional investors on how to generate safe, risk-adjusted returns by investing in African infrastructure.

Peter Sullivan (Managing Director, Head of Public Sector Africa at Citi)

Peter Sullivan

Managing Director, Head of Public Sector Africa at Citi

Peter M. Sullivan is a Managing Director and Head of the Public Sector Group for Africa at Citi since 2007. He is also a Senior Credit Officer of Citi and is based in London.

The Public Sector Group facilitates global best practices and success transfer among its clients including Central banks, Multilateral Development Banks and Sovereigns. Peter is responsible for developing business and structuring and delivering product solutions for sovereigns, state-owned enterprises and multilateral institutions in Sub-Sahara and North Africa.

He has 29 years of customer relationship and industry experience with Citi including the coverage of Global Financial Institutions, Industrials and Sovereigns. His product background extends from trade and structured finance to fixed income and credit-based structures.

Peter has been the lead on a number of innovative transactions in the region including the first fuel import hedging by a Sub-Saharan African Sovereign, the first local currency sovereign sukuk, the first local debt exchange and a number of receivable-backed financings for Central Governments. He was an integral member of the teams that arranged the debut bond issues for Ghana, Gabon, Senegal, Nigeria, Rwanda and Cote d’Ivoire as well as the respective follow-on issues. Peter also led a Risk Capital Review for the African Development Bank in 2008.

Peter has delivered presentations and served as a speaker at numerous conferences and events on Africa including those sponsored by the World Bank, the IMF, African Development Bank and Reuters. He has also been engaged in a number of Blended Finance initiatives including Convergence and the Sustainable Development Investment Partnership with USAID, OECD and WEF.
Prior to joining Citi, Peter served 2 years in the U.S. Peace Corps in Mali. Subsequently, he worked as a Financial Analyst for the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission before receiving his MBA from Columbia University in 1989.

Samaila Zubairu (President and CEO of Africa Finance Corporation)

Samaila Zubairu

President and CEO of Africa Finance Corporation

Samaila Zubairu is AFC’s 3rd President and Chief Executive Officer. With over 30 years’ of professional experience, his entrepreneurial leadership propelled the development and implementation of a new five-year corporate strategy, which, at its core, addressesthe urgent mandate of developing and financing infrastructure, natural resources and industrial assets on the continent. Key pillars of the strategy include enhancing the capacity of the team and entrenching a High-Performance Culture; coherent ecosystem strategy for value accretive beneficiation and import substitution; proactive risk and portfolio management to improve AFC’s rating and diversifying the Corporation’s funding sources. Prior to his appointment, Mr. Zubairu was the CEO of Africapital Management Limited, where he established a joint venture with Old Mutual’s African Infrastructure Investment Managers, to develop the Nigerian Infrastructure Investment Fund for infrastructure private equity across West Africa. As Chief Financial Officer for Dangote Cement Plc, he launched Africa’s largest syndicated project finance facility for the Obajana Cement project and managed the unbundling of Dangote Industries Limited to listed subsidiaries on the Nigerian Stock Exchange. Prior to that, he was the Treasurer for the Dangote Group during its transformation from a trading company to an industrial conglomerate. Mr. Zubairu is an Eisenhower Fellow and the first African appointed to the Board of Trustees of the 67-year old international leadership exchange programme. He holds several Non-Executive Board positions. He holds a BSc in Accounting from Ahmadu Bello University, Nigeria and is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, Nigeria (FCA).