(AfDB) - The African Development Bank will host Singapore’s Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam as the Special Guest Speaker of the Kofi A. Annan Eminent Speakers’ Lecture Series taking place on Tuesday, 05 November 2019.

Mr. Tharman Shanmugaratnam will speak on the topic: “Economic Development.”

The lecture, the third in the Kofi A. Annan Eminent Speakers’ Lecture series, will begin at 10.00 am in the Babacar N’diaye Auditorium at the Bank’s headquarters in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire. Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, President of the African Development Bank Group, will deliver the welcome remarks.

Tharman Shanmugaratnam was appointed Senior Minister of Singapore in May 2019. He is also the Coordinating Minister for Social Policies, and advises the Prime Minister on economic policies.

He is concurrently the chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Singapore's central bank and financial regulator. He is also deputy chairman of the GIC (formerly Government of Singapore Investment Corporation) and chairs its Investment Strategies Committee.

Tharman chairs the Group of Thirty, an independent global council of economic and financial leaders. He also chaired the G20 Eminent Persons Group on Global Financial Governance which in October 2018 proposed reforms for a more effective system of global development finance and for financial stability.

He earlier led the International Monetary and Financial Committee, the key policy forum of the IMF, from 2011 to 2014 and was its first Asian chair. He currently also co-chairs the Advisory Board for the UN’s 2019 Human Development Report.

The African Development Bank launched the Eminent Speakers Lecture series  in 2006 to provide a platform for a robust exchange of ideas to meet the challenges of African development.

Since 2006, the series has featured world-class speakers, women and men of renown, politicians, top academics, businesspeople and civil society representatives, who have spoken on a diverse range of topics and issues, including economics, finance, regional integration, human development, the environment, and philosophy.