Zainab Usman

Zainab Usman is a senior fellow and director of the Africa Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. Her fields of expertise include institutions, economic policy, energy policy, and emerging economies in Africa. Previously she was a public sector specialist at the World Bank where she worked on social sustainability, policy reforms, natural resources management, and disruptive technologies. She has worked on these issues in Cote d’Ivoire, Morocco, Nigeria, Papua New Guinea, the Republic of Congo, Serbia, Tanzania, and Uzbekistan. Zainab is the author of the book Economic Diversification in Nigeria: the Politics of Building a Post-Oil Economy, and co-editor of the book, The Future of Work in Africa: Harnessing the Potential of Digital Technologies for All. She also contributed to World Bank’s flagship report on Rethinking Power Sector Reforms in Developing Countries. Her written and broadcast commentary has appeared in Al-Jazeera English, BBC, Foreign Affairs, Project Syndicate, The Washington Post, among others. Zainab obtained her doctorate (DPhil) from the University of Oxford.