Director-General, African Risk Capacity, Ibrahima Diong

Ibrahima Diong has commenced work, with effect from September 1, 2020, as the Director-General (DG) of the African Risk Capacity (ARC) following his unanimous election by the ARC Conference of Parties (CoP) earlier in June 2020.

A joint statement by the African Union (AU) and ARC says Diong, who is an African from the Republic of Senegal, will serve in the capacity of United Nations Assistant Secretary General (UN-ASG) for an initial term of four (4) years.

The new ARC Group DG, who has over 30 years of professional leadership and management experience in Africa, the United States, Europe and Asia, said he is humbled and eager to bring his versatile experience to serve the continent.

“I fully comprehend and appreciate the incredible mission and outstanding work of ARC, with my professional and highly efficient colleagues, we will work relentlessly to not only consolidate the impact of ARC’s work in our current 34 member countries, but to also to scale up our disaster risk management interventions to the rest of the African continent.” Diong noted.

He commended his predecessor, Mohamed Beavogui, for his uncommon leadership prowess which has eleveted ARC to a continental and global leader in development insurance and praised the ARC Group Joint Board and the staff for a seamless transition.

“Never in my 30-year career have I experienced such a smooth, efficient, and highly professional handover process. This is a great example of a smooth leadership transfer in Africa.” He said.

For her part, the Chairperson of the ARC Agency, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, described the new ARC DG as an astute statesman and well-rounded professional who would continue on the good trajectory and achieve even greater strides in delivery of the institution’s continental mission.

“We have gone from providing disaster risk coverage to a handful of countries at the beginning, to the impressive number of countries we have in our pool today. We have also achieved remarkable governance reforms resulting in greater recognition of our work by various stakeholders.” Dr. Okonjo-Iweala said.

African Risk Capacity was established to assists AU Member States in reducing the risk of loss and damage caused by extreme weather events affecting Africa’s populations by providing, through sovereign disaster risk insurance, targeted responses to natural disasters in a more timely, cost-effective, objective and transparent manner.

It is made up of of ARC Agency and ARC Insurance Company Limited. ARC Agency helps Member States to improve their capacities to better plan, prepare and respond to weather-related disasters while ARC Ltd is a mutual insurance facility providing risk transfer services to Member States through risk pooling and access to reinsurance markets.