Dr Eyob Tolina 2024 Speaker

State Minister

Ministry of Finance

Biography

Dr. Eyob Tekalign Tolina is currently a State Minister of Ethiopia’s Ministry of Finance for fiscal policy and public finance, where he has been serving for the past 6 years. Prior to this role, he served as Minister in charge of Ethiopia’s National Planning Commission.

Dr. Tolina has spent over eighteen years helping shape Ethiopia’s economic and social development through various responsibilities within leading public, private, supranational, multinational, and academic institutions.

Dr. Tolina’s diverse background has spanned a variety of roles such as Minister Counselor at the Embassy of Ethiopia in Washington D.C., advisor to the Ethiopian governors of the IMF and World Bank, government and public affairs consultant to Fortune 500 multinational Dow Chemical, and his work with different government agencies including Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Trade. Mr. Tolina has managed the Ethiopian Public Private Consultative Forum (EPPCF), a platform for policy deliberation between the government and the private sector in Ethiopia. Mr. Tolina has also worked for a number of regional and international organizations including UNECA, COMESA, UNCTAD, the World Bank Group and the International Finance Corporation (IFC). Mr. Tolina has also served as a director at SGI Frontier Capital, an American investment firm focused on the World’s Frontier Markets.

These experiences have given Mr. Tolina a unique, balanced perspective on the challenges and opportunities facing developing countries like Ethiopia, a country that is aspiring to become the economic growth engine of Africa.

Dr. Tolina is a political economist with strong skills in team building, advocacy, private equity investing, strategic planning, portfolio management, international relations, private sector development, and policy analysis. Mr. Tolina earned a Master’s degree from George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and a Ph.D. from the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy, with a concentration in political economy.