Abdoulie Janneh

Abdoulie Janneh currently serves as the United Nations Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA). He was appointed to the position by United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in September 2005.

Janneh is an active player in promoting African development and responding to the continent’s national and regional priorities. Throughout his career, he has been an active player in enhancing partnership-building for Africa, aiming to mobilize support and build inclusiveness for shared development objectives. He has established and maintained high level partnership with programme and donor governments, the private sector, civil society and national, regional and international organizations. He has also written articles on African development and delivered policy statements and keynote speeches. He was member of several advisory panels of organizations on Africa’s development.

He started his career at the United Nations Development Programme as a development planner in 1979. Over the years, he has risen to become a senior manager both in the UNDP and its affiliated funds, including Resident Coordinator and Resident Representative in Ghana (1996-1999) and Niger (1993-1996) and Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations Capital Development Fund (1990-1993).

Under his guidance, the UNDP Bureau for Africa has contributed greatly to promoting good governance, the fight against HIV/AIDs, economic reform, fair trade, poverty eradication and crisis prevention. He also pays special attention to issues such as the institutional transformation of the African Union and the successful implementation of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). He has played a critical role in strategy and policy-setting in UNDP and had spearheaded institutional change and development in the organization. In 1999, he led the Transition Team of the former UNDP Administrator, Mark Malloch Brown.

From 2000 to 2007, Janneh served as Assistant Secretary-General and UNDP Regional Director for Africa, in charge of managing UNDP’s largest Regional Bureau, covering 45 countries in sub-Saharan Africa with a complement of over 1,500 staff.

He obtained a Master of Arts degree in Urban and Regional Planning Studies from the University of Nottingham in England. He is also a graduate of Engineering Science from Fourah Bay College, Sierra Leone and undertook post-graduate studies in Project Planning and Appraisal at the University of Bradford in England.