Zainab Usman is Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University in the United States. She is Managing Director for International Programs at the Energy Opportunity Lab, where she leads the Center’s work on energy for development in emerging markets. Usman was the founding director of the Africa Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C., USA, and before that, a public sector specialist at the World Bank. Her work focuses on the economics and politics of natural resources, covering issues such as energy policy, trade, industrialization and international development cooperation.