Minouche Shafik

Dame Nemat Shafik DBE
Deputy Governor of the Bank of England
Incumbent
Assumed office 01 Aug 2014
Personal details
Born	Nemat Talaat Shafik 1962 (age 61–62) Alexandria, Egypt
Nationality	Egyptian/American/British
Alma mater	American University in Cairo University of Massachusetts-Amherst London School of Economics St Antony's College, Oxford

Dame Nemat Talaat Shafik, DBE (Arabic: نعمت شفيق) (commonly known by her nickname Minouche) is the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England with responsibility for markets and banking and a Member of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee. She was the Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, a position she held from 2011 to 2014. She previously served as Permanent Secretary of the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) beginning in March 2008. An economist by training, she has held a number of senior positions in international organisations as well as spoke, taught and published extensively on globalisation, emerging markets and private investment, international development, the Middle East and Africa, and the environment.

Early life

Shafik was born in Alexandria, Egypt in 1962. Her family left Egypt in the 1960s, and she lived in the United States as a child, later returning to Egypt where she graduated from high school. After a year at the American University in Cairo, she went to the University of Massachusetts-Amherst where she completed a B.A. in economics and politics. After two years of working on development issues in Egypt for the U.S. Agency for International Development office in Cairo, in 1986 she completed an MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics followed by a DPhil in Economics from St Antony's College, University of Oxford in 1989.

Although Shafik grew up in the United States and speaks in American English, she has both British and American nationality.

Career

Shafik joined the World Bank after Oxford and filled a variety of roles starting in the research department where she worked on global economic modelling and forecasting and then later on environmental issues. She moved to do macroeconomic work on Eastern Europe during the transition and in the Middle East where she published a number of books and articles on the region's economic future, the economics of peace, labour markets, regional integration, and gender issues.

Shafik became the youngest ever Vice President at the World Bank at the age of 36.

She initially went to the British Government's Department for International Development (DFID) on secondment as Director General for Country Programmes where she was responsible for all of DFID's overseas offices and financing across Africa, the Middle East Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. She was appointed as DFID's Permanent Secretary in 2008 where she managed a bilateral aid programme in over 100 countries, multilateral policies and financing for the United Nations, European Union and international financial institutions, and overall development policy and research – responsible for 2400 staff and a budget of £38 billion (about $60 billion) for 2011–2014. During her tenure, DFID was described by the OECD independent peer review as "a recognised international leader in development".

Academic work

Shafik has held academic appointments at the Wharton Business School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Economics Department at Georgetown University. She has authored, edited, and co-authored a number of books, including Prospects for the Middle East and North African Economies: from Boom to Bust and Back? and Challenges Facing Middle Eastern and North African Countries: Alternative Futures, and Reviving Private Investment in Developing Countries. She has written articles for a number of publications, including Oxford Economic Papers, Colombia Journal of World Business, The Middle East Journal, Journal of African Finance and Economic Development, World Development, and the Journal of Development Economics. She contributes to a blog with other heads of development agencies at Ideas4development.org.

Boards and charitable activities

Dame Nemat Shafik currently serves on a number of boards including the Middle East Advisory Group to the International Monetary Fund, and the Economic Research Forum for the Arab World, Iran and Turkey. She is also active on the board and as a mentor to the Minority Ethnic Talent Association which supports under-represented groups to advance to senior positions in the civil service.

She has chaired several international consultative groups including: the Consultative Group to Assist the Poor, the Energy Sector Management Assistance Programme, the Global Water and Sanitation Program, Cities Alliance, InfoDev, the Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility, and the Global Corporate Governance Forum. She was instrumental in launching the Africa Infrastructure Consortium.

Awards

In 2009, she was named "GG2 Woman of the Year" at the 11th Annual GG2 Leadership & Diversity Awards, run by the Asian Media and Marketing Group. Shafik was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in the June 2015 Queen's Birthday Honours.

Personal

She has twin children with her husband Raffael, and three stepchildren. She speaks English, Arabic, and French.

Sources

• "New top civil servant for DFID". DFID.gov.uk. 9 June 2011. Archived from the original on 12 June 2011. Retrieved 6 January 2012. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)