Junaid Kamal Ahmad is Vice President of Operations at the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), the Political Risk Insurance and Credit Enhancement arm of the World Bank Group (WBG). He is responsible for advancing and enhancing MIGA’s brand partnering across WBG and with financial institutions, private investors, and development actors to originate and pursue meaningful, impact-driven projects. Mr. Ahmad also leads the Operations team of the Agency to deliver on MIGA’s mandate of mobilizing private finance for development projects in emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs).
Mr. Ahmad, a Bangladeshi national, was previously the Country Director for the World Bank in India. He joined the Bank in 1991 as a Young Professional and worked on infrastructure development in Africa and Eastern Europe. He has since held several management positions, leading the Bank’s programs in diverse regions including Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, and South Asia. Mr. Ahmad served as the Chief of Staff and earlier as Special Assistant to the President of the World Bank Group. During a part of his time at the Bank, Mr. Ahmad was based in Johannesburg and New Delhi and in 2004, he was a core member of the World Development Report: Making Services Work for Poor People.
Throughout his career, Mr. Ahmad has focused on the role of service delivery in building and leveraging state capability and markets towards the goals of economic development and sustainability. In his work, Mr. Ahmad has focused on public finance and federalism and the management of urban governments across diverse country contexts from fragile and conflict settings, low and middle income, to large federations. In addition, he has worked on public-private partnerships in infrastructure sectors and with municipal governments, focusing on the mobilization of private equity and long-term debt from capital markets. As the first Senior Director of the World Bank’s Water Global Practice and the former Country Director for India, Mr. Ahmad initiated and oversaw multi-billion-dollar sector and country programs covering finance, infrastructure, and human development. He is recognized for his strategic leadership of teams to deliver impact at scale.
Mr. Ahmad holds a PhD in Applied Economics from Stanford University, a 2-year MPA from Harvard University and a BA in Economics from Brown University. Prior to joining the World Bank Group, Mr. Ahmad worked in the Planning Commission, Government of Bangladesh, in the areas of trade and industrial policy. Mr. Ahmad has published on fiscal federalism and decentralization and on various aspects of infrastructure reform and service delivery.
