Africa calls for World Bank reform after Nigerian denied top post

It didn’t exactly surprise Africans. But the World Bank decision to pass over Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala for the bank’s presidency still stung.

Following the selection this week of Dartmouth College president and public health expert Jim Young Kim as World Bank president, Africa financial leaders are calling for more democracy and transparency in the global financial institution.
The selection of Kim, who had faced two other developing-world nominees, the African candidate and former Colombian Finance Minister Jose Antonio Ocampo, continued a seven-decade practice of installing an American citizen to lead the bank.
Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan said Tuesday that Okonjo-Iweala represented the voice of developing countries in a campaign for the reform of the World Bank. She was nominated in a rare show of unity of sub-Saharan Africa’s three major rival powers, South Africa, Nigeria and Angola.


Okonjo-Iweala is not widely popular in Nigeria, mainly because of her role in removing a fuel subsidy in January, which provided cheap fuel to the population but cost billions of dollars. At the time, critics saw her as forcing World Bank policies on Nigeria, and thousands protested the removal of what they viewed as the sole benefit from their country’s corruption-riddled oil industry.
In response, she tweeted that “It is not fair when people say that this fuel subsidy policy is an Okonjo-Iweala and IMF/World Bank one. It is not. Neither is it about me.” (The subsidy was later partially reinstated by Jonathan).
Many in Africa, however, viewed the World Bank’s presidential decision as based not on merit but nationality and some said it called the bank’s legitimacy into question.
“Many Nigerians are opposed to the policies of the World Bank and IMF, pushed on to developing countries as far back as 1986. Those sentiments remain,” said analyst Otive Igbuzor of the African Center for Leadership, Strategy and Development, referring to a policy that has forced tough budget cuts on developing countries in order to qualify for loans.
Igbuzor said in a phone interview that without providing a greater role to emerging economies, the World Bank risked irrelevance — and a threat that in future those economies could form their own development bank.

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