La Banque Mondiale à besoin des talents de la diaspora africaine

As you are aware, every year in an increasingly global world, innumerable highly educated Africans leave their home countries to seek their fortunes and expand their opportunities abroad. Most of these professionals never return home, though their abilities and knowledge are priceless commodities that could contribute to development of their home countries. In addition to this group, thousands of Professionals of African descent, located in communities around the world i.e. North America, Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East and Gulf, and in Australia and Pacific countries, are actively seeking ways to re-engage with their ancestral homes in Sub-Saharan Africa.

During a series of frank discussions that took place at the Second African Diaspora Open House held at the World Bank in February 2010, identifying and utilizing the unique talents of the African Diaspora Professionals in the World Bank’s development work, emerged as a clear priority. The World Bank African Diaspora Program (ADP) team, which I lead, and 400 representatives of the African Diaspora present at this event, collectively recognized that these invaluable human resources can and must be tapped to support Africa in overcoming its development challenges.

As a result, the ADP is developing the African Diaspora Professional Skills Database (ADPSD). It is our belief that this database will form a basis on which the diverse skills and experiences of African Diaspora professionals and their firms, can be utilized by the World Bank (and its client countries), to support its Africa region portfolio of over 500 World Bank-assisted development projects, with a total commitment of about US$35.0 billion.

The ADP cordially invites individuals and firms in the African Diaspora to visit our website (www.worldbank.org/afr/diaspora/ [1]) and submit their CVs and/or corporate profile and completed Information Form to afrdiaspora@worldbank.org [2]. Submitting these details is no guarantee of a World Bank consulting assignment, but it significantly increases the opportunity for these individuals and firms to be recognized by the Sector Managers and Task Team Leader (TTLs), who make the decisions about consulting assignments.