Ms. Ngone DIOP
Ngone Diop is a seasoned economist and development expert with over 20 years of experience in strategic leadership, macroeconomic policy, poverty reduction, gender equality, and transformative development.
Since her appointment in 2020, Ms. Diop’s portfolio has spanned 15 countries, including the Sahel, and 15 Intergovernmental Organizations, making it ECA’s largest and most complex subregion. She has spearheaded flagship initiatives to accelerate implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), including support to national AfCFTA strategies in 14 West African countries.
Under her leadership, the office received an award from the Africa Economic Zones Organization in 2022 recognizing its contribution to regional economic integration. She has also championed a regional programme on demographic dividend–sensitive budgeting, helping countries design policies and investments that harness the potential of Africa’s youth.
To leverage digitalization and the private sector, Ms. Diop launched the West African Business Linkages Platform (WABLP), a digital B2B tool that connects and empowers more than 500 young and women entrepreneurs across multiple sectors.
In response to mounting debt vulnerabilities in the subregion, she led a domestic resource mobilization and debt-swap initiative and provided tailored support to national investment plans, investment conferences and donor roundtables, contributing to significant increases in resource mobilization for member States.
Previously, Ms. Diop served as Chief of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment at ECA, where she led the African Gender and Development Index, the African Union Gender Scorecard and economics-of-gender programmes, supporting evidence-based policymaking on women’s empowerment. Earlier, she worked as an adviser to the Government of Rwanda with the UK Department for International Development (DFID), contributing to the formulation of Vision 2020, post‑genocide recovery programmes and pioneering gender‑equality policies, including the country’s first gender‑budgeting initiative, which helped underpin Rwanda’s globally recognized progress on gender parity.
Her international policy experience also includes serving as a Policy Advisor at UNDP in New York, where she led Millennium Development Goals–related programmes, and as Regional Technical Advisor on gender budgeting at the World Bank. In parallel with her policy work, Ms. Diop has held academic roles, including as Course Director at ECA’s African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (IDEP) and as a lecturer at ISEG in Dakar, Senegal. She has served on the boards of Akina Mama wa Afrika, as Vice President, and the Agency for Cooperation and Research in Development (ACORD), reflecting her long-standing engagement with civil society.
Ms. Diop’s publications focus on gender budgeting, women’s rights and inclusive economic growth, with contributions to works published by the Commonwealth, Zed Books and Emory University, among others. Her leadership and influence have been recognized through honours such as the 2024 ELOY Awards, listing in the Africa Women CEOs Network “50 Power People” and inclusion in the 2025 Tropics “African Doers Powerlist.”
She holds a Masters in Economics from Aix‑Marseille III University, a Masters (DEA) in economics and management, and a BA in Economics from Aix‑Marseille II, France, complemented by various leadership and management certificates.