Current Position & Biography
Vera Songwe is Founder and Chairwoman of the Liquidity and Sustainability Facility and CEO of its Secretariat. She is also a nonresident senior fellow in the Africa Growth Initiative at the Brookings Institution. Her current work connects development finance with proposals for tokenisation and digital payments, rather than the operation of a cryptocurrency exchange or blockchain protocol.
Songwe is from Cameroon and previously served as Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. The commission’s historical biography records her appointment in April 2017 and identifies her as the first woman to hold the role. Her earlier career included senior positions at the International Finance Corporation and World Bank. These are historical credentials, not current United Nations authority.
The LSF describes its board’s responsibilities as including governance, strategy, risk management and accountability. That institutional work provides context for Songwe’s focus on access to liquidity. It should not be taken to mean that every LSF operation uses blockchain or that the facility has implemented her published tokenisation proposals.
Notable Contributions
In February 2026, Brookings published Songwe’s viewpoint on tokenisation and financing for African small and medium-sized enterprises. She proposed representing verified claims, including unpaid government invoices, as tradable blockchain-based assets. In her example, a supplier could sell a claim at a discount to obtain cash before the government settles the underlying obligation.
The article also considers how transaction records could help build firms’ credit histories. Its recommendations include regulatory sandboxes, coordination between securities regulators and central banks, financial education and adequate technical infrastructure. It acknowledges risks from weak governance, poor data quality and inadequate investor protection. These are policy proposals and conditions for adoption, not evidence that a live platform has eliminated payment delays or credit risk.
Songwe also participated in the World Economic Forum’s January 22, 2026 session “Where Are We on Stablecoins?” The organiser’s programme places her alongside industry and monetary-policy speakers discussing payments, cross-border flows and reserve currencies. Her participation establishes a direct connection to the stablecoin policy debate; it does not imply endorsement of the businesses represented by other panellists.
Why Katharos Is Following Them
Songwe brings an African development-finance perspective to debates that often concentrate on trading markets and technical infrastructure. Her tokenisation proposal begins with a concrete business problem: a small supplier can have a legitimate receivable but lack the cash needed to keep operating.
That framing makes the legal and economic substance of a token important. Turning a claim into a digital instrument does not, by itself, settle questions about the debtor’s ability to pay, the enforceability of the claim or the price a buyer should accept. Those questions remain relevant when assessing proposed applications.
Areas to Follow
Relevant areas include whether proposed receivables markets move beyond commentary into documented pilots, the safeguards used in any implementation, and Songwe’s continuing contributions to stablecoin and cross-border-payment discussions. Claims of improved financing should be assessed against actual participation, costs and repayment outcomes.
Reporting Scope
Coverage concerns her documented policy analysis and public roles. It does not present proposals as completed deployments, suggest that tokenisation guarantees liquidity or imply that she speaks for all African governments or financial institutions.
Katharos Category
Policy & Regulation
Photo Credit
Archival photograph: UK Department for International Development (DFID), “Dr Vera Songwe, Executive Secretary, United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, speaking at the UK-Africa Investment Summit in London, 20 January 2020 20200120113825ZJW_4202”, January 20, 2020. CC BY 2.0. Cropped and resized. Original photograph: Source 6; license: Source 7. The source does not name an individual photographer.