Samer Al-Samarrai is a Lead Economist in the World Bank’s Education and Skills Global Practice. Since joining the Bank in 2011, Samer has led and supported education operations, policy dialogue, and analytical work globally and across East Asia and Eastern and Southern Africa. His current work focuses on strengthening education systems, improving learning outcomes, and linking education reform to broader human capital outcomes. He leads work on the Advancing Innovative Methods to Promote Learning Program in Eastern and Southern Africa (AIM4Learning), a regional program that supports basic education reform across the region, as well as the Ethiopia Human Capital Operation and the Africa Think Tank Platform project with the African Union.
Samer co-authored the World Development Report: Learning to Realize Education’s Promise and has contributed to several major World Bank reports on education systems, teacher reform, and education finance, including Teacher Reform in Indonesia. Recently, he also edited The Role of Intergovernmental Fiscal Transfers in Improving Education Outcomes. Before joining the World Bank, Samer was a senior policy analyst in UNESCO’s Global Monitoring Report team, where he helped develop key themes and coordinate research on progress toward Education for All. Between 2001 and 2008, he was a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of Sussex and a BSc and MSc from the London School of Economics.