In-Country Lead, CGAP
Buddy Buruku serves as the in-country lead for CGAP, a think tank housed within the World Bank Group. With CGAP, Ms. Buruku’s work focuses on the use of digital financial services (DFS) to drive the government’s cashlite agenda and DFS market development as a tool for financial inclusion. Buddy also specializes in the digitization of payments in agriculture and has been very involved in the generation of national data on the status of financial inclusion, insights from which are being used by the central bank, the Ministry of Finance, and industry to promote DFS.
Buddy was a DFS consultant for the World Cocoa Foundation. Buddy has also worked at the African Center for Economic Transformation advising high level government officials on how to improve the efficiency of their economies; worked in financial services consulting in New York focused on big data analytics; worked in renewable energy and energy efficiency advisory in Beijing; and is also the founder of a commercial poultry farm in Uganda.
Buddy has an MBA from the Wharton School (UPenn), a master's from the Johns Hopkins - Nanjing Center, and a BA in East Asian studies from Haverford College, USA. She speaks six languages including Chinese, French, Spanish, and Portuguese.