Nobel Prize Summit
Alfred Watkins
Alfred Watkins is the Founder and the Chairman of the Global Solutions Summit.
Alfred Watkins is the Founder and the Chairman of the Global Solutions Summit (GSS), which focuses on strategies to promote the large-scale deployment in emerging markets of commercially viable, financially sustainable development solutions for potable water, renewable energy, information and communications technology (ICT), health care, housing, sustainable agriculture, and food processing. Prior to founding GSS, he worked for more than 23 years at the World Bank and served for more than 6 years as the World Bank’s Science and Technology Program Coordinator and as the head of the World Bank’s Science, Technology and Innovation Global Expert Team. He has extensive on-the-ground experience leading science, technology, and innovation capacity-building programs and projects in Africa, Asia, and various countries in the Former Soviet Union, including Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Latvia. He organised two World Bank Global Forums on Science, Technology and Innovation Capacity Building for Sustainable Development (one in 2007 and another in 2009). Before joining the World Bank, he also served as a legislative assistant/staff economist in the U.S. Congress and was an assistant professor at the University of Texas. In March 2017, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres appointed him to a 3-year term on the Governing Council of the Technology Bank for the Least Developed Countries (LDCs). In January 2020, the Secretary-General reappointed him to a second 3-year term. The main objective of the Technology Bank, which was formally established by the UN General Assembly in December 2016, is to help LDCs identify and deploy the technology they need to (1) foster inclusive sustainable growth and (2) achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.