Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala for World Bank President!

Barrie McKenna of the Globe and Mail has a tantalizing and wonderful suggestion today:

The British media is already floating Tony Blair as a possible successor. The British Prime Minister, who is due to meet Mr. Bush at the White House today, announced last week that he's stepping down after a decade in power.
Some World Bank critics want a more radical leadership change, proposing candidates such as South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel and Nigeria's former finance minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

In September 2005, I gave Okonjo-Iweala Euromoney's Finance Minister of the Year award as the best finance minister in the world. It was an award for which she was more than qualified, and her departure from Nigerian government was a major setback for that country.

Okonjo-Iweala knows the World Bank inside out and backwards, having spent most of her career there; she's hard-headed yet also very good at building consensus. She's incredibly smart, very hard-working, and has first-hand knowledge of the problems of running a developing nation's finances. Most importantly, as an African, albeit one who's spent most of her life in the US, her appointment would be a concrete sign that the Bank exists for the benefit of the world's poorest nations, and is not seen by the White House as being an instrument of US foreign policy.

Notes worldbankpresident.org:

I doubt any of the American names mentioned as possible replacements to Wolfowitz can match someone like Ngozi's experience and record on the key issues of aid to Africa, Anti-Corruption, and the credibility needed to raise the IDA funds.
Her experience, both as a secretary to the board of executive directors and as a long time bank career member that rose through the ranks to the level of VP, also put her way ahead on both the question of building trust with the staff of the bank and also rebuilding the relationship with the board of directors.
The only questions about her chances have to do with whether the President of the US , who has the power to do this, is smart enough to name the first woman, the first African, and the first non-American as the head of the World Bank.

Ngozi would be better suited for the job than any American, Bill Clinton included. She's certainly better qualified than Hank Paulson, who seems to be cropping up as another possible World Bank president. He knows how to run a big organization, and he has solid environmental credentials, but his development experience is slim, and in any case it's long since time that someone other than an American gets the gig.

I doubt that Bush has the vision to nominate Ngozi. But it would be a wonderful day if he did.

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