Nairobi, April 9 -- It takes a full three-course meal for Vincent Rague to fully exhaust his professional resume. And not that he speaks slowly.

The resume is, admittedly, earned. Over four decades, he moved through the Central Bank of Kenya, trained with Citibank in Athens and NatWest in London, climbed through the World Bank's IFC to become its first African Regional Director for Southern Africa, setting up the Johannesburg office from scratch, at a time when there were quiet doubts inside the organisation about whether an African could carry that role in that environment.

He moved through Washington, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia before coming home to advise Kenya's National Treasury on trade and financial reform - specifically th...