Dr. Ed Olowo-Okere, FCA
Senior Advisor to the Vice Presidency for Prosperity, World Bank Group
Ed Olowo-Okere has over three decades of experience in governance across the globe. He is currently Senior Advisor in the Prosperity Vice Presidency of the World Bank Group. Prior to that, he was Global Director of the World Bank’s Governance Practice, where he provided strategic leadership to the Bank’s work on public financial management, public procurement, public investment management, public institutional reform, domestic resource mobilization, subnational governance, anti-corruption and transparency, fiduciary assurance, political economy analysis, mainstreaming climate change in governance, and GovTech. His other positions at the World Bank include Director of Governance for the Africa, Middle East and North Africa, and Europe and Central Asia Regions, Director of Operational Services for the Africa Region, and Regional Financial Management Officer for the Africa Region.
Prior to joining the Bank in 1988, Ed held positions in the public and private sectors in Nigeria and New Zealand. He has researched and published in reputable international journals and lectured at undergraduate and postgraduate levels on accounting and finance. Ed holds a PhD in Management (with a specialization in Change Management and Public Financial Management) from the University of Bath, UK. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN).
An advocate of good governance and an anti-corruption curator, Ed has led many important initiatives in governance and institutions with global impact, for example, the GovTech Initiative and Global Partnership, the “Future of Governments”, Global Public Financial Management Reports, Supreme Audit Institutions Independence Maturity Index, GovTech Maturity Index, etc. He directed innovations in PFM to respond to development challenges such as human capital development, climate change, etc. Also, Ed has played various global leadership roles in public financial accountability. For example, he was the World Bank Director with oversight for the gold standard PFM diagnostic tool, Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA). He was the Chair of INTOSAI Donor Coordination Group, and Co-Chair for INTOSAI Donor Coordination Steering Committee. He was a Co-Chair of the Public Interest Committee (i.e. the oversight Committee) for International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board (IPSASB). He is a member of the Advisory Board of International Consortium on Governmental Financial Management (ICGFM).
Ed has won national and international awards. The most recent are the David M. Nummy Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Consortium on Government Financial Management (ICGFM) in 2023; the Global Leadership Award (for outstanding contributions to the global profession) from the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) in 2022; and the Governance Pioneer Award in the 2021 ranking of the 50 most influential people in the world leading agile governance initiatives by Apolitical and the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council (GFC) on Agile Governance.