Agnès Soucat

Dr Agnes Soucat is the Director of the Division of Health and Social Protection of the France Development Agency (AFD). She previously was the Director of the Department of Health Systems, Governance and Financing at the World Health Organization (WHO). Dr Soucat previously held the positions of Director for Human Development for the African Development Bank, where she was responsible for health, education and social protection for 53 African countries, and of Global Lead Economist, Health, Nutrition and Population for the World Bank. She has over 30 years of experience in health and poverty reduction, covering more than 70 countries in Africa, Asia and Europe. She was a pioneer of several innovations in health care financing including community and performance based financing and authored seminal publications on these topics. She is also the co-author of the World Development Report 2004 “Making Services Work for Poor People” and of the Lancet Commission report “Global Health 2035: a world converging within a generation”. She was commissioner of the Lancet and Rockefeller Commission on Planetary Health. Dr Soucat did also extensive work on health labor market dynamics in Africa. Dr Soucat holds an MD and a Masters in Nutrition from the University of Nancy in France as well as a Master of Public Health and Ph.D in Health Economics from the Johns Hopkins University.