Africa Comes to His Rescue

Irrespective of the outcome of the scandal that World Bank President Paul D. Wolfowitz got himself into over his role in the saga that developed around his girlfriend, Ms. Shaha Riza, the episode became one of those rare moments in international affairs when a US power broker found relevance for Africans whose support he needs to save the day for him. At a time when development and finance ministers from different countries who attended the just concluded annual meeting of the Bank in Washington, DC found cause to express “great concern” in regard to the impact of the saga on the Bank’s ability to continue to fulfill its mandate, some key West European ministers haven’t hidden their desire to have Mr. Wolfowitz resign. Some of the ministers have made quite critical comments about him and his credibility in the course of expressing that desire.

UK’s Hillary Benn opined that, “this whole business has damaged the bank and should not have happened”, while her Germany counterpart, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul insisted that Mr. Wolfowitz should decide “whether he still has the credibility to represent the position of the World Bank.

There’s no gain saying that the behind the scene lobbying that Mr. Wolfowitz was reported to have undertaken last weekend to convince the ministers to extend support to him in his quest to retain his job as Bank president was not selective. But it seems that he achieved success in that regard mostly from African ministers. One of them, Ms. Antoinette Sayeh, a former Bank employee who is now Liberia’s finance minister boldly praised him for his “visionary leadership”. Ms. Sayeh went as far as proclaiming that “he has certainly championed Africa’s cause in the two years of his leadership”. N’Gandu Magande, her counterpart from Zambia thinks that “he has made us believe in ourselves”. Their support for him tallies with the one from South Africa’s Trevor Manual earlier in the weekend.

These African ministers who stepped forward to assert their views and support for Mr. Wolfowitz deserve to be commended. They have certainly gone against the grain of orthodoxy here. Rather than flow with the tide of events in support of the position held by their West European counterparts, they found the courage to express an independent position. One hopes that Mr. Wolfowitz will remember them in the future for throwing him such vital life lines of support.