Makhtar Diop is currently serving as the Managing Director of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), where he has been since 2021. In this role, he is responsible for leading the IFC’s efforts in building sustainable infrastructure in developing and emerging economies.

Prior to joining the IFC, from 2018 to 2021, Diop served as the World Bank’s Vice President for Africa. In this capacity, he oversaw the delivery of a record-breaking USD$70 billion to Sub-Saharan Africa to help tackle development challenges such as increasing access to energy; boosting women’s and youth’s economic empowerment; and promoting an enabling environment for more innovation and technology adoption. He also called for greater investment in renewable energy and pushed for stronger regional interconnectivity in the power and transport sectors. Before that, he was the World Bank Director for Finance, Private Sector & Infrastructure in the Latin America and the Caribbean Region; Country Director for Brazil, where he helped finance major infrastructure work. Earlier in his career, he served as the Minister of Economy and Finance of Senegal,
where he played a key role in instituting structural reforms.

Diop studied economics at the Universities of Warwick and Nottingham in England. His contributions to the field have been recognized with awards such as the Regents’ Lectureship Award from the University of California, Berkeley in 2015.