Prime Minister Edouard Ngirente, on Thursday, March 23, held discussions with Floribert Ngaruko, the new Executive Director of the World Bank for Africa Group 1 Constituency where he represents 22 African countries at the World Bank Group, including Rwanda.

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Rwanda is one of the first countries that Ngaruko has visited as part of his new responsibilities of representing them at the World Bank Group’s board.

In an interview with the media after talks with the Prime Minister, Ngaruko said his visit to Rwanda has two broad objectives: - to introduce himself as the country’s new representative, and "to have a conversation with the authorities” in order to get a clear view of the challenges and opportunities in Rwanda’s development agenda so as to be able to defend the interests of the country on the board of World Bank Group.

"We talked about inflation precisely. We also talked about the need to improve on the execution of World Bank projects,” he added.

He noted that the world is emerging from a serious crisis which disrupted almost everything, and there was a need to talk about solutions to the problems going forward.

In a media interview, finance and economic planning minister Uzziel Ndagijimana, said the World Bank is an important partner in Rwanda’s development and the two sides are working on projects in sectors including infrastructure, urban planning, education, and so on.

Prior to his new appointment at the World Bank Group, Ngaruko, a Burundi national, had 20 year-long exposure to development management in three of the most influential regional and international institutions that have the greatest engagement in development in Africa.

He has held various positions at the World Bank, Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) from 2002-2004, in addition to working at The African Capacity Building Foundation—ACBF from 2004-2009.

Recently, he was working at the African Development Bank from 2009-2020. Prior to his work with international development organizations, Ngaruko served in the Academia as Senior Lecturer in Economics at the Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis (Nice, France) and as Professor Assistant in Economics at the University of Burundi.

He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Université de Nice-Sophia Antipolis; Nice, France, a Masters’ Degree of Arts in Economics from Université Catholique de Louvain; Louvain, Belgium, and a Bachelor of Arts Economics from Université du Burundi; Bujumbura, Burundi.