From Nigeria to the World Bank–and now back
It’s a mildly hopeful sign that World Bank managing director Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is giving up her post to serve as Nigerian finance minister in the administration of Goodluck Jonathan. She joins a government that many see as the best opportunity in years to turn around that country’s fortunes. Reuters had this description: Passionate about promoting ...
It's a mildly hopeful sign that World Bank managing director Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is giving up her post to serve as Nigerian finance minister in the administration of Goodluck Jonathan. She joins a government that many see as the best opportunity in years to turn around that country's fortunes. Reuters had this description:
It’s a mildly hopeful sign that World Bank managing director Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala is giving up her post to serve as Nigerian finance minister in the administration of Goodluck Jonathan. She joins a government that many see as the best opportunity in years to turn around that country’s fortunes. Reuters had this description:
Passionate about promoting Africa as an investment destination and widely-respected for her practical approach to development, Okonjo-Iweala stands out in a cabinet largely made up of familiar faces and anonymous technocrats. She was praised the last time she served as finance minister, from 2003 to 2006, for fighting corruption, boosting transparency, and negotiating the cancellation of nearly two-thirds of Nigeria’s $30 billion Paris Club debt.
A World Bank official told me that Okonjo-Iweala was widely respected on 19th Street:
She certainly is one of the few people at the Bank who can go head to head with [Bank president Robert] Zoellick if needed. But it seemed always clear that she considered her job in Nigeria unfinished and with the new Government, and with her economic portfolio back, this is her chance to continue the path she started earlier.
She is one of a number of developing-country officials who have moved into and out of the world of international organizations as the political winds at home shift. A Harvard and MIT graduate, Okonjo-Iweala rose through the ranks at the Bank, reaching the position of vice-president before taking up a Nigerian ministerial post in 2003. She resigned from that position after then president Obasanjo narrowed her powers. Shortly thereafter, the Bank hired her again, this time as managing director.
This function of international organizations as talent incubators for unstable national governments strikes me as an important and understudied phenomenon. High-level service in the Bank has allowed her to develop expertise and a powerful network of international contacts at a time when her skills might have been wasted at the national level. But for all the benefits that service at the Bank has provided, it also produces complications. Should they desire to do so, political opponents won’t have any trouble painting her as an out-of-touch international mandarin.
David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist
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