Pres. Weah Appoints Liberian to Senior AfDB Post
Rufus Darkortey.
President George Weah has approved the nomination of Rufus Darkortey to serve as Executive Director at the African Development Bank (AfDB) in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.
Upon the President’s approval of the nomination, the Board of Governors of the Bank met yesterday to elect Darkortey as the next Executive Director for Constituency countries including The Gambia, Ghana, Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Sudan.
He is expected to serve as one of the 20 Board of Directors of the Bank, representing 81 countries from across the world to steer the affairs of the Bank. The African Development Bank Group is Africa’s premier development finance institution. It comprises three distinct entities: the African Development Bank (AfDB), the African Development Fund (ADF), and the Nigeria Trust Fund (NTF). On the ground in 41 African countries with an external office in Japan, the Bank contributes to the economic development and the social progress of its 54 regional member states
Darkortey once served as President of the Liberian Association of Cleveland and in Ohio for several years. He is an economist and financial manager with many years of experience working for multinational institutions, including KeyBank NA (the 24th largest bank in the U.S. with assets of approximately US$186 billion).
His professional experiences include economic development, infrastructure and real estate development; revenue performance, management and domestic resources mobilization; fiscal and monetary policy framework formulation and management; budgetary and resource allocations; domestic and international trade; small, medium, and large-sized enterprise development and investment.
Darkortey holds a master’s and bachelor’s degrees in economics from the Cleveland State University in Cleveland, Ohio and an Associate degree with honors in Computer Science with emphasis in computer programming from the A.M.E. Zion Community College in Liberia.
Prior to this appointment, Darkortey previously worked at the AfDB as Senior Advisor to the Executive Director from 2018 to 2019. He also served as the Alternate Executive Director at the Bank from 2020 up to his election as Executive Director on May 26, 2022.
Additionally, before his approval by President Weah, Darkortey served as the Senior Economic and Policy Advisor in the Office of the Minister of Finance and Development Planning, Samuel Tweah, with a focus on fostering economic, fiscal, monetary, and other development-related matters of the country, including public and private sector stakeholders engagements, both at the national and international levels to facilitate the coordination, formulation, and implementation of the country’s development plan, the Pro-poor Agenda for Prosperity and Development (PAPD).