Changing the World Bank

If Nigeria's finance minister is selected, she would be the first African, first black and first female to head the World Bank. The institution was created in 1944 along with the IMF to manage the post-World War II global economy. Nearly 70 years later the world has changed and countries once dependent on the World Bank are now global powers themselves. As the World Bank is about to select a new president, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Nigeria's finance minister, spoke to Sir David Frost about her candidacy. She said: "I grew up in Nigeria, I lived in poverty, I know what it is to be able to fetch water, to not have three meals a day, I lived through the conflict and war in Nigeria and I know what it means to be in a fragile and conflict-affected state and what that does to economic development. So I'm not talking about these things from theory. I've also had 25-years of experience working at a bank in regions all over the world...and this is capped off by working on the other side of the donor community in terms of being a finance minister and now coordinating minister for the economy. So I know what it is like to manage complex development problems every day... I'm passionate about development, I'm passionate about what the World Bank can do."