Carmelo Cocuzza is currently Head of the Advisory and Blending Unit in the Global Partners Department at the European Investment Bank’s (EIB) headquarters in Luxembourg where he covers technical assistance and blended finance programmes in Africa, Caribbean the Pacific, Asia and Latin America.
He holds a Bachelor of Science (Hons) degree from Oxford Brookes University in England, a Masters degree in Banking and Finance for Development from the University of Milan, Italy and is an alumni of the Oxford Impact Investing Programme of the Said Business School at Oxford University.
Carmelo has over 25 years of development finance experience acquired at the EIB and at the African Development Bank. He has been Head of the EIB’s Regional Representations for Southern Africa and Indian Ocean based in Pretoria, South Africa (2012-2017) and for East and Central Africa in Nairobi, Kenya (2004-2009). He has been Senior Investment officer for EIB’s operations in ASEAN countries and Loan officer for Central Africa where he led the structuring of the EIB’s funding for the Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline. He has been an active advisory board member of various venture capital funds for SMEs in East Africa. He is a certified Microfinance Trainer and in 2010 he privately founded and established a business incubator, FinAfrica, based in Kampala, Uganda.