Antoinette Sayeh, IMF Africa Head at SAIS: ‘The Region is Catching Up’

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African agriculture, African governance, Antoinette Sayeh, Burkina Faso, Deborah Brautigam, IMF, Infrastructure in Africa, Liberia, SAIS, Shanta Devarajan, Uganda, World Bank

The last time I heard the head of the Africa division of a global financial institution speak on Massachusetts Avenue (Shanta Devarajan of the World Bank at Brookings), I was thoroughly displeased.  Yesterday, I heard Antoinette Sayeh, former Finance Minister of Liberia and currently the Director of the Africa Department at the IMF speak on “Drivers of Growth in Middle and Low-income sub-Saharan Africa.”  Although one can almost always find a bone to pick (keep reading for what it was this time), on the whole, I found her macro-economically focused remarks to hit most of the notes I would like to hear.

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Winslow Robertson on Two Triangles of the DC China – Africa Triforce

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China - Africa, Deborah Brautigam, SAIS, Sino - Africa, Yoon Jung Park

Readers will likely know of the indefatigable Winslow Robertson, the coordinator of the very useful Sino-Africa DC group (even if just because I’ve cross-posted some  work from his blog, Cowries and Rice before).

Earlier this month, Winslow attended a not too well publicized event with two local giants of the China – Africa scholarly scene: Deborah Brautigam of SAIS and Yoon Jung Park (who I’ve previously covered) at SAIS.

You can read Winslow’s take on the event here.  Winslow is extremely dynamic and active on Twitter, providing lots of useful analysis and insights to his followers, whose numbers vastly dwarf mine (perhaps I need to start live tweeting).  Get in on the action @Winslow_R.

I’m very curious to know more about what makes this China – Africa devotee tick and hope to publish a profile on him on these pages before the year is out (I have recently gotten away from doing the profiles, which I found to be very rewarding).