Solomon Quaynor, Vice President, Private Sector, Infrastructure & Industrialisation, African Development Bank

Solomon Quaynor is the Vice President for Private Sector, Infrastructure & Industrialization at the African Development Bank (AfDB).  He joined AfDB in May 2020.  He has over 25 years’ experience in development finance and investment banking.   

From 2018-2020 after Mr. Quaynor left IFC to join the private sector, he provided specialized advisory services in emerging markets as: Senior Advisor to Rothschild Global Advisory for Africa (excluding SA); Senior Advisor to IFU (Danish DFI) for sub-Saharan Africa; Investment Committee member and Senior Advisor to a $350 million African PE Fund; Senior Advisor to an African infrastructure fund; and, served on the boards of InfraCredit Nigeria and Verdant Ventures.      

Mr. Quaynor previously worked at IFC in various capacities for several years and there he became an emerging markets specialist investor with experience developing business and investing across financial institutions including banks & NBFIs, Telecoms Media & Technology, Infrastructure including Energy, Manufacturing, Agribusiness & Services.  He has experience supporting senior executives and board leadership of corporates in strategy development, key government/regulatory engagement and private sector partnership development, and often served as trusted advisor to the C-Suite with companies across multiple sectors in Africa.   

Before IFC, Mr. Quaynor worked in the US in investment banking on Wall Street, providing corporate finance advisory services to large and medium corporates.  He worked for Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns, respectively, in New York City as an Associate and Vice President in the generalist and media & communications groups.  Before business school, Mr. Quaynor was a college professor at the Atlanta University Center in Math and Engineering. 

Mr. Quaynor is a graduate of the J L Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.  He also holds an MSc in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, as well as a BS in Applied Physics from Atlanta University Center.