The appointment of a US academic to head the world Bank instead of Nigeria's Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala shows how out of touch the institution is.

The selection of a health policy expert from an Ivy League university to run the World Bank over the finance minister of Africa’s second largest economy shows that the American establishment still does not understand how much the world has changed.

In the days when the economies of the US and Europe dominated global gross domestic product, it made sense to maintain the status quo of having a European at the helm of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and an American at the World Bank.

But for some while now, major emerging markets such as Brazil and China have been complaining that their voting power in the Bretton Woods institutions does not reflect the new economic structure of the world. Their concerns have been acknowledged but little has been done to address them.

A significant step forward would be if the top jobs were decided on merit rather than for political reasons, as seems to be the case in the selection of the American Jim Yong Kim as the next president of the World Bank.

When former French finance minister Christine Lagarde was chosen as IMF managing director last year, no one could argue against her eminent qualifications to do the job. Her main rival for the job – Mexican central bank governor Agustin Carstens, who is a former finance minister and deputy managing director of the IMF – had an equal claim but her selection could be justified as broadly merit based.

In the recent contest to replace Robert Zoellick as the president of the World Bank, the US choice of Mr Kim – up against Nigeria’s finance minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who is a former World Bank deputy managing director – is harder to justify. Another candidate who withdrew before the final decision was taken, former Colombian finance minister Jose Antonio Ocampo, complained about the political bias in the selection process.

Mr Kim is undoubtedly a gifted individual, a medical doctor educated at Harvard, who from 2004 to 2006 served as director of the World Health Organisation’s HIV/AIDS department. He is currently president of Dartmouth College.

The presidency of the World Bank, however, requires the broader expertise of an economist and the leadership skills that come with a senior government role. On this basis, Mr Kim stands poorly against Ms Okonjo-Iweala.

A great opportunity has been missed to put the World Bank at the head of global economic changes rather than playing catch-up. 

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