Martha Phiri

Martha Phiri is an economist and development practitioner with over 20 years’ experience in development planning and financing.  She is currently working as Country Manager for African Development Bank in Rwanda. She takes the lead and supports Bank teams in developing business, ensuring efficient delivery of both sovereign and non-sovereign funded operations and providing technical and knowledge advisory services to support reforms in line with strategic priorities of the country. As Country manager, she oversaw the Board approval of the Rwanda Innovation Fund (RIF). The RIF, the first of its kind for the Bank in an ADF country brings innovative solutions to address the problem of absence of venture capital financing for tech-enabled Small and Medium Enterprises while crowding in private capital.

Prior to her appointment as Country Manager, she spent 10 years working as a Country Economist for countries in different income groups - Namibia (an upper middle-income mineral-driven economy), Mauritius (an upper middle-income services-driven economy) and Malawi (a low-income agro-based economy.  As a Country Economist, she was instrumental in the design of the Bank’s country strategies that sought to address structural bottlenecks while leveraging opportunities to drive job-creating growth in different country income groups. During her tenure Bank investments in Namibia more than tripled while in 2013 Mauritius saw the first non-sovereign lending approval for the Bank in the country in over a decade. She has also published as lead author a number of African Economic Outlook country notes and conducted a number of Country Policy and Institutional Assessments and Country Risk Assessments. 

Before joining the Bank, she worked as an Economist for the Government of Malawi for nearly ten years, which gives her a good understanding of the public sector policy environment. A Malawian national, Ms. Phiri holds a PhD in Economics from University of Liverpool and a Master of Science in Agricultural Economics from University of Malawi.