The Diplomat
Antón Leis García will be the new director of the Spanish Agency for International Cooperation and Development (AECID), replacing Magdy Martínez Solimán, who remained in the post for less than a year, as The Diplomat reported yesterday.
The appointment of Antón Leis was decided yesterday by the Governing Council of the Spanish Cooperation Agency (AECID), at the proposal of the Secretary of State for International Cooperation, Pilar Cancela Rodríguez.
Antón Leis, a Galician by birth, has developed his professional career in the field of international organisations. He is a civil servant at the OECD, where he has held various positions in the Secretariat for Global Relations and in the Cabinet of the Secretary General, to whom he was an advisor.
The new director of the AECID, who is also secretary general of PSOE Paris and a member of the Federal Committee of the Socialists representing PSOE Europe, has a close relationship with the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, for whom he was a member advisor in the General Secretariat for International Affairs, EU, G20 and Global Security of the Cabinet of the Presidency of the Government, between 2018 and 2020. In that position, he was responsible for coordinating Spain’s participation in the G20 and other multilateral affairs. He was also an advisor to the Secretary of State for International Cooperation.
Previously, he has held positions at the African Development Bank as a senior specialist in governance and private sector development from Tunisia and Côte d’Ivoire, as well as at the World Bank as legal advisor, working on Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean regions from the Washington headquarters.
He holds a Law Degree with Extraordinary Prize from the Carlos III University of Madrid. He holds a Master of Laws degree from Harvard Law School and a double Master of Public Administration degree from the London School of Economics and the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris. He speaks English, French and Portuguese.
