Ahmed Abdel-Latif is the Director-General of CCCPA as of 11 October 2020.
A career diplomat since 1997, he has a long standing experience in multilateral affairs with a focus on global issues including sustainable development, trade, energy, innovation and knowledge governance.
At the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he served at the Departments of International Cooperation for Development, United Nations Affairs and International Economic Relations. From 2000 to 2004, he was posted to the Permanent Mission of Egypt to the United Nations (UN) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva where he worked on disarmament, trade, health and intellectual property issues. He also worked at the Office of the Spokesman of the Prime Minister from 2005 to 2006.
On secondment from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he held senior positions in intergovernmental organizations and think thanks. Prior to joining the Cairo Center, he was the Permanent Observer of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) to the United Nations and Chief of the Agency’s New York Office. He joined the Agency in November 2015 serving as Special Assistant, Policy and Programme, Office of the Director General and then as the Chief of the Office of the Director General from 2017 to 2019. He was also Senior Programme Manager for Innovation, Technology and Intellectual Property at the Geneva-based International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD) from 2007 to 2015.
For more than twenty years, Ahmed Abdel-Latif has taken an active part in international debates on sustainable development, climate change, innovation, green technologies and intellectual property and has been a frequent speaker on these topics at international conferences and meetings. He has also been a resource person in training and capacity building activities in these areas delivered by international organizations and other technical assistance providers.
He has authored and co-edited numerous publications including books, research papers, policy briefs and articles. Recent publications include: The Cambridge Handbook of Public-Private Partnerships, Intellectual Property Governance, and Sustainable Development (2018, edited with M. Chon and P. Roffe) and Protecting Traditional Knowledge: The WIPO Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (2017, edited with D. Robinson and P. Roffe). He has been a peer reviewer for journals such as Energy Policy and Climate Policy.
Ahmed Abdel-Latif was a research fellow in the Sustainability Science Programme at Harvard
University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government in 2012. In 2014-15, he was the representative of Research and Independent Non-governmental Organizations (RINGOs) to the Advisory Board of the Climate Technology Centre and Network (CTCN) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). He has also lectured on international relations at the Institut de Droit des Affaires International (IDAI), a branch of the Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, at the Law Department of Cairo University.
He holds a master’s degree in public international law (LLM) from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), a bachelor’s degree in political science from the American University in Cairo (AUC), the diplôme from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) and the diploma from the Egyptian Institute of Diplomatic Studies (IDS).
Ahmed is fluent in Arabic, English, French and Spanish.
