Luca Antonio Ricci is an Advisor and Mission Chief at the International Monetary Fund, and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research. He leads the IMF African Department Working Group on CBDC and Digital Payments, which organized a survey of the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) Central Banks (CBs), and created a network of the SSA CBs on these issues. He is also Mission Chief for the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU). He previously was Mission Chief for the Ivory Coast, Chile (negotiating the $24bn Flexible Credit Line), Ecuador Panama, and Oman. He held positions in the IMF’s Research Department, publishing over 40 papers in refereed journals on exchange rates, international finance, external debt, growth, inflation, macroeconomic insurance, social unrest, trade, and firms’ location choices. In 2010 he spent one year at Barclays Capital, as Managing Director and Head of International Economics. Prior to joining the IMF, he was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University and a Researcher at the University of Konstanz. Mr. Ricci received a Ph.D. and an M.A. in Economics from The Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, and a B.A. in Economics from the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, summa cum laude.