Marie-Ange Saraka-Yao

Marie-Ange Saraka-Yao is the Chief Resource Mobilization and Growth Officer. Since joining Gavi in 2011, her leadership has been instrumental in driving Gavi strategic growth and raising critical resources to provide equal access to vaccines for all. Under her stewardship, USD more than USD33 billion was raised from 60 donor governments and foundations, corporations and organisations to immunise more than 1 billion children and support pandemic response. In her capacity, she also drives the strategic resource mobilisation of the institution, aligning Gavi’s priorities with those of public and private investors but also towards leveraging diverse financial instruments (such as International Financing Facility for immunisation (IFFIm), Advanced Market Commitment (AMC) to attract private sector capital. With extensive experience in business development and portfolio management, Ms. Saraka-Yao has helped increase Gavi’s footprint with the private sector and innovators including overseeing and growing critical partnerships with major digital, technology ventures and international finance institutions (IFIs) stimulating innovative solutions for healthcare. Most recently, Ms. Saraka-Yao provided leadership and direction to COVAX as a global initiative trying to achieve equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines. She stewarded the institution response to the pandemic with the development of flexible innovative financing facilities to attract more than USD 13 billion of sovereign and private capital to support equitable access to covid-19 delivering billions of doses for 92 low and middle income economies. In addition, she is the lead negotiator with G7 and G20 leaders aiming to shape Gavi’s strategic relevance to address key development challenges such as health architecture effectiveness, pandemic preparedness and response, the nexus of health and climate change, digital development and the promotion of financial innovation notably for surge financing and regional manufacturing. Prior to joining Gavi, Ms Saraka-Yao held several senior positions in international investment banks and multinational development agencies building deep experience in regional operations and finance. As a senior executive to the President of the African Development Bank, Ms Saraka-Yao successfully led twice development policy and debt relief negotiations with international financiers. She also served as Lead advisor to the Senior Vice President in charge of country operations and strategy, providing guidance to the reform and new strategy of the Bank notably vis a vis fragile states, regional infrastructure and private sector operations. During her fifteen years’ experience in development financing, notably at the World Bank Group, she played a key role in expanding the World Bank. Group (WBG)’s private sector