Makhtar Diop has been appointed as vice-president of the World Bank in charge of infrastructure. Diop will take office of this newly created position on 1 July 2018. His portfolio includes transportation, the digital economy, energy, the extractive sector, as well as infrastructure financing and public-private partnerships (PPPs). Diop was Senegal’s former minister of economy and finance and has become one the most influential Africans in the world. An economist by training, Diop started his career in the banking sector before joining the IMF and later the World Bank. Between 2002-05, Diop was the World Bank’s country director for Kenya, Eritrea, and Somalia, based in Nairobi. From 2009 to 2012, he was the World Bank country director for Brazil, where the World Bank helped finance major infrastructure projects. Prior to his current appointment, Diop had been serving as the World Bank’s vice president for Africa since May 2012, overseeing some 600 development projects on the continent that total USD 65 billion. Diop holds degrees in economics from the Universities of Warwick and Nottingham in England. He received the Regents’ Lectureship Award from the University of California, Berkeley in 2015.