FINANCE: World Bank Appoints First African Managing Director

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Sep 24 1999 (IPS) - World Bank President James Wolfensohn has appointed the first African to serve as a Managing Director of the Bank, one of its most powerful positions.

Wolfensohn announced Friday, amid preparations for next week’s joint annual meeting of the Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), that Mamphela Ramphele, currently vice-chancellor of the University of Capetown in South Africa, will become Managing Director for Human Development early next year.

A controversial figure at home in South Africa, Ramphele also will be the second woman in the Bank’s history to serve on its senior management team.

“This is an historic appointment for the Bank,” Wolfensohn said. “It is historic to have an African appointed to the post of Managing Director.”

“It’s way past time,” said one Bank official from Africa, who asked not to be identified. “It’s been a disgrace to the Bank that no African has served on the senior management team.”

Ramphele, who is 51 years old, began her public career in the 1960s as a founder and student activist in the Black Consciousness Movement (BCM).

Her activism and close association with martyred BCM leader Stephen Biko, with whom she had a son, in 1977 led the apartheid regime to banished her to a remote black township where she helped build community health, day-care, and adult-literacy programmes until the ban was lifted in 1983.

Ramphele qualified as a medical doctor at the University of Natal in 1972 and holds a doctorate in Social Anthropology from the University of Capetown. She also has earned degrees in Administration and diplomas in Tropical Health and Hygiene and Public Health.

“She is regarded as very capable as an administrator, manager and public intellectual,” according to Salih Booker, senior fellow for Africa at the influential Council on Foreign Relations here.

Booker also noted that Ramphele’s post-apartheid career has been controversial.

At the University of Capetown, for example, she has been outspoken in her opposition to what she has called a “culture of entitlement” under which many South African blacks believe they are entitled to preferences in education, housing, and employment.

As a 1997 New York Times profile noted, her views on the subject had put her “at odds not only with her more ‘Africanist’ colleagues but also with mainstream members of the African National Congress (ANC), the country’s ruling party, and with many of South Africa’s leading businesses, which are falling over themselves to hire and promote the limited number of well-educated blacks, often as window dressing.”

Ramphele has repeatedly declined to join the ANC, keeping a generally critical distance from the party. As a result, she has been excluded from ministerial positions in Pretoria.

“I would be very unhappy if I were a member of a party and I had to toe the line even if that went against my values,” she told the Times. “I wouldn’t survive that.”

As a Managing Director, Ramphele will join Wolfensohn’s top management team, a group of just half a dozen other managing directors and senior vice presidents who oversee the Bank’s overall organisation and strategy.

The team reports to Wolfensohn, who, in turn, reports to the Bank’s executive board, which is made up of representatives of member nations.

The world’s largest single source of official development assistance, the Bank and its affiliates last year approved more than 30 billion dollars in new financing for developing countries.

Wolfensohn’s predecessor, Lewis Preston, first created a senior management group in 1991 to streamline Bank management and reassert the president’s authority over a sprawling bureaucracy that had become increasingly dominated by regional vice presidents.

Preston’s first team consisted entirely of white men recruited from within the Bank.

After Wolfensohn, an Australian-born US citizen, took over in 1995, the management group’s composition became somewhat more diverse.

Jessica Einhorn, a senior financial official from the United States, was made Managing Director for Finance and Resource Mobilisation, while Gautam Kaji, an Indian national, was recruited as one of two Managing Directors for Operations.

Kaio Koch-Weser, who holds dual citizenship in Germany and Brazil but who currently works for the German government, also was elevated to the top management team from his position as vice- president for Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.

In another innovation, Wolfensohn earlier this year appointed Nemat Shafik of Egypt to the post of Vice President for Infrastructure and Private Sector Development, making her the first Arab woman – and also the youngest person – appointed to the echelon immediately below the senior management team.

Wolfensohn also divided the Africa department, appointing two vice presidents – one of them an African – where previously there had been only one, always a European man.

The current senior management team is chaired by Sven Sandstrom, a Swede originally appointed to the position by Preston, and includes men from China, Germany, Spain, and the United States.

Bank officials said Ramphele’s appointment is consistent with Wolfensohn’s often-controversial efforts to promote more women and nationals of poor countries to senior positions.

Her work in grassroots education and health, according to these officials, was also consistent with the Bank’s growing emphasis on securing the participation of those who are supposed to benefit from its development work, especially in the world’s poorest countries.

“Her experience and judgment combined with her drive and organizational skills will add greatly to our capabilities,” Wolfensohn said in his announcement.