Kanae Watanabe has over 12 years of World Bank operational experience, as well as 25 years of policy, think-tank, and academic experience in fragile and conflict-affected states. She is currently the Partnership Advisor for the Education Global Practice of the World Bank, leading the World Bank’s engagement with all external partners on global education, as well as Program Manager of the Foundational Learning Compact, an umbrella trust fund for early childhood, primary, and secondary education and the EAA-World Bank Partnership Facility. She is also the Task Team Leader for the INSPIRE program, which supports the integration of refugee children into host country education systems.
Previously, she was the Senior Operations Officer for Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, and Algeria in the Maghreb Department in the MENA region. She is a co-author and co-editor of, The Long Road to Inclusive Institutions in Libya: A Sourcebook of Challenges and Needs. She has led the development of the World Bank’s re-engagement strategies for Libya and Algeria. She has also been responsible for the country program coordination, portfolio management and quality review for projects in Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, and Algeria. She has also been team leader for the State and Peacebuilding Trust Fund for Libya focusing on dialogue on reforms needed for recovery and filling sectoral knowledge gaps in basic services. She has also been part of the project team for the innovative Morocco Early Childhood Education Project and the MENA Human Capital Update.
Previously, she was the Country Officer for Haiti where she developed the World Bank’s reconstruction strategy, following the massive earthquake in 2010, and was responsible for program coordination and portfolio management. While working on Haiti, she was also the team leader for a project on political economy in education service delivery, as well as a pilot on social accountability in primary education.
Before joining the World Bank, she worked for the United States Congress as a Senate Foreign Policy Fellow and for the United States Institute for Peace as a consultant. Kanae is a Japanese national. She has a Ph.D. in International Law and in Conflict Management and a M.A. in International Law and Economics from the Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies, a Certificate of Public International Law from The Hague Academy of International Law, and a B.A. in Political Economy from University of California at Berkeley.