Former World Bank president James Wolfensohn talks about his time in office, the future of development and why we can all learn from Nelson Mandela
In your autobiography, A Global Life, you write about growing up with financial insecurity. How does one go from that life to becoming the president of the World Bank in 1995?
Wolfensohn: I'm Australian but came to study in the US. It was during this time that I realized the world was much bigger than I thought and if I was going to live a full life I needed to know about places outside of the west. It didn't take a genius to go from that point to thinking about development.
By the time you became president in 1995, the bank— along with the IMF — had faced serious criticisms about the impact of its structural adjustment programs on developing countries. Your approach in office however is described, by the bank, as being characterized by a renewed focus on inclusivity, poverty reduction and tackling corruption. How would you describe your impact?
Wolfensohn: I think during my tenure we extended the scope of our activities and we developed a new approach to doing business: we became more locally oriented and much more integrated into individual cultures. We tried to move away from just doing the odd project here and there: we wanted to be more long-term and to make countries feel like they were actually participating in business so we included civil society, indigenous peoples, faith-based groups and other stakeholders in our dialogues. The heavily indebted poor countries initiative in 1996, which was a comprehensive debt reduction program, the Strategic Compact in 1997 which aimed to address the bank's ineffectiveness and turn it into a knowledge bank, and the Comprehensive Development Framework in 1999 which emphasized the interdependence of all stakeholders in development, were some of the key reforms I oversaw during my time at the bank.