Mats Karlsson has been engaged in international development and integration since 1983. After positions in Swedish administration, politics and government, he joined the World Bank in 1999, where he since has been focusing on global governance, African development, and now Maghreb development and Mediterranean cooperation.
He took up his current job as Country Director for the Maghreb (for Algeria, Libya, Malta, Morocco and Tunisia) in November 2007, and is responsible for coordinating the World Bank’s cooperation on the Mediterranean region, relations with the Union for the Mediterranean and European Union institutions, and the Marseille Centre for Mediterranean Integration.
As Country Director in West Africa (for Burkina Faso, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone), based in Accra 2002-07, he was instrumental in the realization of modern coordinated partnership, from supporting Ghana’s accelerated growth and poverty reduction to the post-conflict reconstruction in Liberia and Sierra Leone.
As World Bank Vice President of External Affairs and United Nations Affairs 1999-2002, he pursued strategic policy dialogue with the Bank's partners and stakeholders. With the UN he worked on the Millennium Development Goals, the Monterrey Summit on Financing for Development and the Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable Development. He also led the World Bank’s engagement with civil society in debating globalization. Since 2000, he has been promoting multilateral system-wide cooperation as co-chair of the UN High-Level Committee on Programmes under the UN Chief Executives Bureau, chaired by the UN Secretary-General. He chaired UN-Energy 2004-7, after assisting in its creation following the World Summit on Sustainable Development. Within the HLCP, he is currently leading the UN system working group on climate change.
From 1994 to 1999, he was Swedish State Secretary for International Development Cooperation. He began his career in development in 1983 when he joined Sida. After working mostly with Eastern and Southern Africa, he moved to the Foreign Ministry and became Chief Economist. He left Government to serve as Foreign Policy Advisor to the opposition Social Democratic Parliamentary Group 1991-94. He has co-authored four books on the transformation of Central and Eastern Europe. He was secretary in the Commission on Global Governance 1992-94.
Born in 1956 in Solna, Sweden, Mats Karlsson studied economics and philosophy at the University of Stockholm. He has also studied music at the academies of Vienna and Prague and played in the Stockholm Philharmonic.