Update (April 2026)

The Infra4Dev Conference originally scheduled for June 4–5, 2026, has been postponed and will be rescheduled to a later date. 

 

We are working with partners to confirm new dates and will update this page once details are available. Thank you for your interest and continued engagement.

 

The Infrastructure for Development Conference series (#Infra4Dev) is an initiative of the World Bank’s Infrastructure Vice-Presidency, aiming to promote dialogue and exchange between leading edge economic researchers and the wider community of policymakers and practitioners on leveraging infrastructure for development. The Infrastructure Vice-Presidency focuses its work on energy and extractives, transportation, urban, resilience and land, as well as the cross-cutting topics of infrastructure finance and PPPs.

 

Infra4Dev is an annual forum that bridges rigorous economic research with policy and practice. It brings together researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to share evidence, stress‑test ideas, and generate concrete, policy‑relevant insights to improve the design, financing, and delivery of infrastructure services in developing countries.

 

Conference Focus

Infra4Dev 2026 will examine how infrastructure investments translate into jobs and economic growth. Discussions will center on:

  • What works, under what conditions, and at what cost
  • How successful models can be adapted and scaled
  • The policy, regulatory, financing, and institutional frameworks needed to support jobs‑rich and inclusive growth

While the conference has a global focus, there is a strong emphasis on developing country contexts, particularly Africa, reflecting the region’s rapid urbanization, infrastructure investment needs, and demographic dynamics.

 

Thematic Areas

Conference sessions will cover a range of topics, including but not limited to:

  • Impacts of electrification on employment, firms, and household livelihoods
  • Job effects of renewable energy deployment and energy‑efficiency programs
  • The role of regional economic corridors and logistics systems (roads, rail, ports, and airports) in growth and job creation
  • Last‑mile connectivity and inclusive access to labor markets
  • Agglomeration, firm formation, and labor reallocation
  • Implications of demographic change and urbanization for infrastructure demand
  • Planning, land use, and municipal finance for jobs‑rich urbanization
  • Jobs and local development linked to critical minerals for the energy transition

Program Structure

The program will feature:

  • Contributed sessions with research papers selected through a competitive submission process
  • Invited sessions showcasing frontier research and applied policy work
  • Policy panels bringing together academics, practitioners, and policymakers to discuss evidence, implementation challenges, and lessons for scale

Paper Submissions

⛔ The deadline for paper submissions has passed, and the conference is no longer accepting submissions.

 

Infra4Dev 2026

Keynote speakers will include:

 

Photo of Catherine Wolfram, William Barton Rogers Professor of Energy Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Catherine Wolfram, William Barton Rogers Professor of Energy Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

She previously served as the Cora Jane Flood Professor of Business Administration at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley.  

​From March 2021 to October 2022, she served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Climate and Energy Economics at the U.S. Treasury, while on leave from UC Berkeley. Since March 2025, Wolfram has served on the COP30 Ad Hoc Council of Economists and chaired a working group on climate coalitions.
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​Before leaving for government service, she was the Program Director of the National Bureau of Economic Research's Environment and Energy Economics Program and a research affiliate at the Energy Institute at Haas. Before joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, she was an Assistant Professor of Economics at Harvard.
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Wolfram has published extensively on the economics of energy markets. Her work has analyzed rural electrification programs in the developing world, energy efficiency programs in the US, the effects of environmental regulation on energy markets and the impact of privatization and market restructuring in the US and UK. She is currently working on projects at the intersection of climate, energy, and trade, including work on carbon border adjustment mechanisms and oil market sanctions.

She received a PhD in Economics from MIT in 1996 and an AB from Harvard in 1989. 

 

 

photo of Dr. Mahmud Hassan, Chief Economist, Dangote Group

Dr. Mahmud Hassan, Chief Economist, Dangote Group

Dr. Mahmud Hassan is a renowned economist, financial sector analyst and regulator, and central banker, with over 30 years experience in financial sector surveillance, supervision and regulation, economic policy research and modelling, and public and private sector expert. Before his retirement from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), in 2024, he was one time the Director, Trade and Exchange Department, as well as, the Director of Monetary Policy Department, where he oversaw, at the technical level, the design, formulation and implementation of monetary policy, exchange rate, and money market policy initiatives and reforms. He served as the Secretary to the Monetary Policy Committee of the Central Bank of Nigeria and earlier served as the Special Assistant on Economic Policy and Research to the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria.

Prior to these roles, he was the Group Head, Macro-prudential surveillance and analysis at the Financial Policy and Regulation Department of the CBN. He also served at the African Union Commission, Ethiopia, as a technical expert and lead consultant on African trade integration and Monetary Union, as well as on the Committee for the establishment of African Monetary Fund.
He has served on the Boards of many multilateral corporations, including the African Finance Corporation, as a Non-Executive Director.
 

He is a visiting scholar and faculty in many Nigeria Universities, including, scholar of Applied Macroeconomics at the Energy Business School of the Federal University of Petroleum Resources, Effurun, Nigeria, and a visiting Professor of Economics to some Universities in Nigeria. He has published numerous policy and research papers in the field of macro economics, applied econometrics, energy economics and modeling, monetary economics, enviromental economics, fiscal and private sector developments , as well as financial engineering. He holds a first degree in Economics from Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria, and MSc in Energy Economics and Policy, and PhD in Economics from University of Surrey, United Kingdom.


He is an alumnus of Harvard School of Government (HKS) and holds the Harvards Executive Policy Certificate. He is a short-term Expert of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Capacity Development Institute and facilitator at many regional and continental policy research institutes. He is a Fellow of Nigeria Statistical Association, Fellow of Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria, and Fellow of the Compliance Institute of Nigeria. He is a certified Bank Examiner and AML/CFT Analyst. He is a member of the Daily Trust Board of Economists and Senior Fellow at the Institute of Governance and Economic Transformation (IGET). He is currently the President of the   Nigerian Association for Energy Economics.

He joined the Dangote Group in late 2025, as the Group Chief Economist and the Group top advisor on Economic Strategy. The Dangote Group is the largest private conglomerate in Africa, with foot-prints in Manufacturing, Petrochemicals, Oil and Gas, Minning, Food processing, Fertilizer, Power/electricity, Automobile, Port Logistics – and has production plants in 17 African countries and the single largest oil refinery in the world, in Nigeria.