Speaker Profile

Rui Santos

Executive Director, Investment Promotion, Boa Vista and Maio Islands Tourism Development Corporation SA

Rui’s professional career has been mostly dedicated to the economic development in Africa and his home country of Cape Verde. After his internship as a securities analyst for a well-established financial assets management firm in Los Angeles, California, joined a joint project of the International Finance Corporation and the United Nations Development Program dedicated to providing management and training support to start-up or expanding companies in Africa, across many sectors of economic activity. Since his return to Cape Verde in 1999, Rui has provided expertise to, or lead several public-sector programs of critical importance to economic development, including programs for financial sector reform, regulatory capacity building, privatization of state enterprises, investment climate reform, private sector development and foreign direct investment promotion. He then held a senior position in the investment department of a Saudi diversified group, before returning to Cape Verde, in 2014, to manage the foreign direct investment promotion efforts of the country’s first tourism development corporation, in his current position.