Details

When

July 30, 2014, 12:00 pm - March 28, 2024, 8:21 pm

Where

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
1779 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington , District of Columbia 20036 (Map)

The Middle East Institute and The World Bank are pleased to host a presentation and discussion of the recently released World Bank report, More Jobs, Better Jobs: A Priority for Egypt.  After opening remarks by Wendy Chamberlin (President, The Middle East Institute) and Inger Andersen (MENA Vice President, The World Bank), lead author Tara Vishwanath (Poverty Global Practice, The World Bank) will present the main findings of the report, focusing on its implications for policy. Discussants Hisham Fahmy (American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt), Hafez Ghanem (Global Economy and Development Program, The Brookings Institution), and Ana Revenga (Poverty Global Practice, The World Bank) will join Vishwanath for a discussion about how to revitalize Egypt's private sector through reforms aimed at creating diverse job opportunities, promoting formal sector employment, and engaging excluded populations. Journalist Paul Danahar (BBC) will moderate the event.

Biographies:

Tara Vishwanath is a lead economist in the Poverty Global Practice of the World Bank Group.  In her career at the World Bank she has been the technical lead for work on poverty, inequality, gender and impact evaluation in South Asia, and more recently in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). She also served as a core author of the World Development Report: Knowledge for Development (1998/99).  She has led many major analytical reports: recent examples include, “Opening Doors; Gender Equality and Development in the Middle East and North Africa” (2012), “Seeing is Believing: Mapping Poverty in the Palestinian Territories”(2014) and “Urbanization Beyond Municipal Boundaries: Nurturing Metropolitan Economies and Connecting Peri - Urban Areas in India” ( 2013).  Before joining the World Bank, she was a professor in the department of economics at Northwestern University and has published widely in international journals in the fields of Economic Theory, Labor Economics, and Development.

Hisham Fahmy has been serving as executive director then CEO of the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt since December 1999, before which he was gen­eral manager from 1987 to 1993. He is also the founder and former chairman of the Egyptian Society of Association Executives (EgSAE), an association whose mission is to enhance the professional management of associations in Egypt. Mr. Fahmy previously served as acting director of the Egyptian Center for Economic Studies, a nonprofit think tank that carries out and disseminates independent economic re­search. He worked on implementing programs that furthered the center’s mission, and oversaw the financing and administration that sustains them. Mr. Fahmy currently serves on the advisory board of American University Cairo’s School of Business and is a member of the American Society of Associ­ation Executives (ASAE).

Hafez Ghanem is senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development Program at the Brookings Institution, leading the Arab Economies Project. His current work focuses on the impact of political transition on Arab economic development. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of California, Davis. He is a development expert with extensive experience in policy analysis, project formulation and supervision and management of multinational institutions. He joined the Brookings Institution in 2012 as a senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development program to lead the Arab economies project. During the period 2007-2012, he worked at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) as the assistant director general responsible for the Economic and Social Development Department. 

Ana Revenga is the senior director of the Poverty Global Practice at the World Bank Group. In her 24-year career at the World Bank, she has worked in both technical and management positions in the East Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, Latin America, and Middle East and North Africa regions, as well as in OECD countries. Until July 1, 2014, she was director of human development in the Europe and Central Asia Region and acting vice president for the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network at the World Bank. Prior to joining the World Bank, she worked in the Central Bank of Spain and taught labor and international economics at the Centro de Estudios Monetarios and Financieros. She has published extensively on education and employment, equity, food security, social protection, poverty, and trade issues, and has worked across a broad spectrum of low, middle and high income countries in Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America. 

Inger Andersen, a Danish national, is vice president of the Middle East and North Africa pro-gram at the World Bank, where she is responsible for the Bank’s strategy and operations throughout the region. Prior to her appointment, she served as vice president of Sustainable Development, sector manager and director in Africa, and director in the Middle East and North Africa. Prior to joining the Bank, Ms. Andersen worked at the United Nations for 12 years, including in UNDP’s Regional Bureau of Arab States and in the United Nations Drought and Desertification Office. While at the UN, Ms. Andersen served on the UN’s three member delegation to the Middle East Multilateral Peace Talks. Ms. Andersen received her Master’s Degree in Development Economics and African Politics from the University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies.

Paul Danahar (Moderator) served as the BBC's Middle East bureau chief between 2010-2013, during which time he and his team won an Emmy and a Peabody award for their coverage of the conflict in Syria. He is the author of the book The New Middle East: The World After the Arab Spring. Previously, Danahar served as the BBC's East Asia bureau chief and the BBC's South Asia bureau chief, where he covered the rise, fall, and eventual return of the Taliban. He was awarded an MBE by Her Majesty the Queen in 2003 for his work as the Baghdad bureau chief during the American-led invasion. Last fall he took up his present position as the BBC’s Americas Bureau Chief based in Washington, DC.