Wednesday, April 17th
8:00 am – 7:30 pm ET
1957 E St NW, Washington DC
Elliott School of International Affairs
The Institute for International Economic Policy is pleased to announce that the Conference on The Future of Finance and Trade in Africa will take place on Wednesday, April 17th, 2024 at the Elliott School of International Affairs. This conference is co-sponsored by the GW School of Business, The Growth Dialogue, and Believe in Africa. Breakfast, lunch, and light refreshments will be provided.
Breakfast (8:00 – 9:00 am)
Welcome Remarks (9:00 – 9:15 am)
Ellen Granberg, President of George Washington University
Keynote Address (9:15 – 10:00 am)
The Honorable Wes Moore, Governor of Maryland
Meetings with Business Leaders by the Honorable Wes Moore (9:30 am, separate breakout room)
SESSION 1: Emerging Technologies for Inclusive Financial Services Delivery (9:30 – 10:40 am)
SESSION 2: Climate Finance and Financial Innovation (10:45-11:45 am)
LUNCH SESSION: Governors of Central Banks and the Future of African Finance (11:50 am – 1:20 pm)
Led by Danny Leipziger, Managing Director of The Growth Dialogue; Professor of Practice of International Business
SESSION 3: Financial Innovations Driving Africa’s Growth (1:30 – 2:40 pm)
Coffee Break (2:40 – 3:00 pm)
SESSION 4: U.S. Economic Policy in Africa: Supporting Progress on the Continent (3:00 – 4:00 pm)
Sponsors (4:00 – 4:30 pm)
Africa Open for Business (4:30 – 5:00 pm)
Closing Keynote Presentation (5:15 pm)
Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, U.S Representative for Florida’s 20th District
Reception (5:30 – 7:30 pm)
About the Keynote Speakers
Wes Moore is the 63rd Governor of the state of Maryland. He is Maryland’s first Black Governor in the state’s 246-year history, and is just the third African American elected Governor in the history of the United States. Moore is a proud graduate of Valley Forge Military Academy and College, where he received an Associate’s degree in 1998, and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. Afterward, he went on to earn his Bachelor’s in international relations and economics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa. While at Johns Hopkins, Moore interned in the office of former Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke. Moore was the first Black Rhodes Scholar in the history of Johns Hopkins University. As A Rhodes Scholar, he earned a Master’s in international relations from Wolfson College at Oxford. In 2005, Moore deployed to Afghanistan as a captain with the 82nd Airborne Division, leading soldiers in combat. Immediately upon returning home, Moore served as a White House Fellow, advising on issues of national security and international relations.
Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, the first Black woman to represent Florida’s 20th congressional district, was re-elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in January 2023 to serve a second term. Congresswoman Cherfilus-McCormick is honored to serve on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs as the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Technology Modernization. She is also the Chair of the Diversity & Inclusion Task Force for the Democratic Women’s Caucus, a Co-Chair of the Haiti Caucus, and serves as a member of the Congressional Black Caucus. Congresswoman Cherfilus-McCormick earned her Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Government from Howard University. In further pursuit of education, the Congresswoman also earned a Juris Doctorate from St. Thomas University. While in office, she remains committed to tackling the growing housing crisis, inadequate access to quality health care, and lack of equitable opportunities throughout her district and country.
Indermit Gill is Chief Economist of the World Bank Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics.
Christopher Fussner founded and owns TransTechnology Pte. Ltd. in Singapore in 1988, a major distributor of surface mount technology and semiconductor capital equipment. Headquartered in Singapore, Trans-Tec has 235 employees worldwide with offices in China, India, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Thailand, United States, and Vietnam. He has had extensive experience in negotiating and establishing joint ventures, strategic alliances, licenses, distribution networks and sales worldwide. In addition, Mr. Fussner is also founder and owner of Certain Cellars Pte. Ltd. in Singapore, an importer and distributor of fine wines. Prior to forming these companies, Mr. Fussner headed Asia sales for Amistar Corporation based in Seoul, Korea and Singapore. As such, he was responsible for sales and service for electronics manufacturing industry machines in Australia, Asia, and India.
Catherina Pattillo is a Deputy Director in the IMF’s African Department where she oversees work on several countries, as well as on climate change, capacity development, gender and research. Since joining the Fund from a position at Oxford University, she has worked in the Fiscal Affairs Department where she was chief of the division responsible for the IMF’s Fiscal Monitor, the Research Department, and on countries in Africa and the Caribbean, and the Strategy, Policy and Review Department where she worked on low-income country issues, and emerging issues such as gender, inequality, and climate change. She has published in these areas, as well as on Sustainable Development Goals, firm dynamics in sub-Saharan Africa, growth, investment, debt, monetary and exchange rate policies, aid, and currency crises. She received her Ph.D in Economics from Yale University.
Steve Suranovic 
Ivanova Reyes is an economist working in the Regional Studies Division of the International Monetary Fund’s African Department. Prior to joining the IMF, she worked at Gettysburg College, the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, Ministry of Economy of the Dominican Republic (DR), Superintendency of Pensions of the DR and Pontificia Universidad Catolica (PUCMM) of DR. She holds a PhD in Economics from American University, a masters in economics from Georgetown University and a masters in applied macroeconomics from the Pontificia Universidad Catolica (PUC) of Chile. Her research is focused on analyzing the impact of China’s economy on Latin America and the Caribbean.
Qianqian Zhang is an economist in the African Department at the IMF. Her research interests include fiscal policy, fiscal decentralization, gender, and development issues. She previously worked in the Fiscal Affairs Department and as a country economist for Afghanistan. She received her PhD from George Washington University and her master’s degree from Cornell University.
Moses Kansanga is an Assistant Professor of Geography and International Affairs at The George Washington University. He is a critical geographer whose research explores questions at the intersection of sustainable food systems and natural resource management from a political ecology perspective. For the past decade, Moses has worked with smallholder farming communities in the Global South with concentration on sustainable agriculture and natural resource politics. He received his PHD at University of Western Ontario.
Robert Weiner is the director of the Master of Science in International Business program and a professor of international business, public policy & public administration, and international affairs at the George Washington University School of Business, Washington D.C. He serves concurrently as deputy director of the Master of Science in Government Contracts, a joint program of the GW Schools of Business and Law. He is a faculty director of the Business School’s Center for International Business Education and Research, and an affiliate of the Elliott School of International Affairs’ Institute for International Economic Policy, Institute for Middle East Studies, Institute for Security and Conflict Studies, and Sigur Center for Asian Studies. He is also senior advisor to the Brattle Group. He received his PhD from Harvard University.
Stephen Kaplan is an Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs. Professor Kaplan’s research and teaching interests focus on the frontiers of international and comparative political economy, where he specializes in the political economy of global finance and development, the rise of China in the Western Hemisphere, and Latin American politics.
Professor Carol Wise, Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Southern California (USC), has written widely on trade integration, exchange rate crises, institutional reform, and the political economy of market restructuring in the Latin American region. Wise is author of the book, Dragonomics: How Latin America is Maximizing (or Missing Out) on China’s International Development Strategy (Yale University Press, 2020), which received USC’s Phi Kappa Phi Faculty Recognition Award in 2021 and the Luciano Tomassini 2021 Award-Honorable Mention for the Best Book on International Relations from the Latin American Studies Association. Professor Wise’s most recent journal articles include: “Playing both Sides of the Pacific: Latin America’s Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with China,” Pacific Affairs (2016); “Conceptualizing China-Latin America Relations in the 21 st Century” (with Victoria Chonn Ching), The Pacific Review (2017); and, “International Trade Norms in the Age of Covid-19” (with Nicolas Albertoni), Fudan Humanities and Social Science Journal (2020). Professor Wise has held Fulbright Grants to Canada, Mexico, and Peru. She is a member of the core social science faculty at Renmin University’s annual International Summer Program, Beijing. In 2019, Wise was the Fulbright-Masaryk University Distinguished Chair in the Czech Republic. Her latest research compares the political economy of development in Latin America and Central/Eastern Europe.
Roselyn Hsueh is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Temple University in Philadelphia, where she codirects the Certificate in Political Economy. She is the recipient of the Fulbright Global Scholar Award for research in India, Mexico, and Russia. Her next book, Micro-Institutional Foundations of Capitalism: Sectoral Pathways to Globalization in China, India, and Russia, is under contract with Cambridge University Press. She is the author of China’s Regulatory State: A New Strategy for Globalization (Cornell, 2011), and scholarly articles and book chapters. BBC World News, The Economist, Foreign Affairs, National Public Radio, The Washington Post, and other media outlets have featured her research. She has testified before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission and consulted for The Center for Strategic and International Studies. Dr. Hsueh has served as a Global Order Visiting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, member of the Georgetown Initiative for U.S.-China Dialogue on Global Issues, and Residential Research Faculty Fellow at U.C. Berkeley. She also lectured as a Visiting Professor at Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico. She held the Hayward R. Alker Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Southern California and conducted international fieldwork in China, Japan, and Taiwan as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar and David L. Boren National Security Fellow. She earned her B.A. and doctorate in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley.
Dr. Danny Leipziger is Professor of International Business and International Affairs at George Washington University, where he is concurrently the Managing Director of the Growth Dialogue. Professor Leipziger has been a faculty member in the highly-ranked International Business Department since 2009, where he has taught both undergraduate and graduate courses on macroeconomics, applied development, financial crises, and international economics, and he has taught in the GW/IFC/Milken Capital Markets Graduate Program for mid-career government officials since its inception. He has been advisor to the governments of South Korea, Vietnam, Ivory Coast, Uzbekistan, Argentina, and South Africa, among others.
