The World Bank’s Anna Bjerde has embarked on a multicountry tour spanning Nigeria, Angola, Ethiopia, and Saudi Arabia — a trip that comes as several of the bank’s flagship initiatives in Africa move from planning to execution.
Bjerde is the bank’s managing director of operations. This trip comes just a few months after she traveled to four other African countries, underscoring how central the continent — and especially job creation — has become to her portfolio, she said.
In the conversation with Devex, Bjerde — recently recognized on Devex’s Power 50 list of the most powerful figures in international development — discussed what an inaugural platform meeting on the Lobito Corridor, a rail and road network linking mineral-rich regions of Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo to Angola’s Atlantic coast, could unlock for cross-border connectivity. That meeting is taking place in Angola, the second stop in her Africa tour.