It’s high time to rethink how the World Bank operates
W anted: a new president for the World Bank, a venerable global institution with a mission to eradicate poverty. The successful candidate will have a plan for tackling the crisis in human development caused by the global pandemic. Climate-change deniers and non-Americans need not apply.
By all accounts, the US has already made up its mind who it wants to run one of the two bodies established at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944. Rajiv Shah, who runs the Rockefeller Foundation and was formerly the head of the US agency for international development (USAID) is the hot favourite to take over from the departing David Malpass.
The idea that the White House should have the right to appoint the president of such an important organisation is a scandalous anachronism. But that has how it has been since the Bank and its sister organisation, the International Monetary Fund, were created as the second world war was drawing to a close. A deal was done in which the Europeans got to pick the managing director of the IMF, while the Americans got the Bank.
Much has happened in the intervening eight decades, not least the growing share of the world economy accounted for by emerging and developing countries. Unsurprisingly, the stranglehold advanced countries continue to exert over the IMF and the World Bank rankles in Beijing, New Delhi, Brasília and elsewhere, too. There’s been talk since Malpass announced his departure of a campaign to persuade Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados, to be the candidate for the developing world.
No question, Mottley would give the World Bank the direction it has lacked in recent years. She was responsible for the Bridgetown Initiative – a plan for the reform of development finance that would
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