Antonio M.A. Pedro is a mineral exploration geologist with more than 40 years of broad experience of and exposure to development issues and management at national, sub-regional, and continental levels. He joined the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) in 2001, where he was (2016-2021) the Director of ECA’s Sub-regional Office for Central Africa (SRO-CA), based in Yaounde, Cameroon, until his appointment as Deputy Executive Secretary (Programme Support) of ECA in October 2021. For 7 years (2009-2016), he occupied the position of Director of the UNECA Sub-regional Office for Eastern Africa (SRO-EA), in Kigali, Rwanda. Prior to joining ECA, he was the Director General of the Southern and Eastern African Mineral Centre (SEAMIC), in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Managing Director of several companies in Mozambique.  Since 1 September 2022, he is the Acting Executive Secretary of ECA.

In his capacity as Director of ECA’s SRO-CA, he played a leading role in the design of the flagship initiative “Made in Central Africa” and formulation of the Douala Consensus (adopted on 26 September 2017) on economic diversification (through resource-driven and trade induced industrialisation), which has become the main framework informing the formulation and implementation of economic diversification and industrial development strategies in Central Africa, a pathway to reducing the exposure of local economies to external shocks arising out of their excessive dependence on the export of commodities.