The Angolan Minister of planning, Ana Dias Lourenco and South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan on Friday (23 March 2012) announced that they will be supporting the candidature for the World Bank presidency of Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.
"We believe that Okonjo-Iweala is an extremely well-qualified candidate as she has both the academic qualifications as well as experience as a finance minister and has worked for many years at the World Bank itself," Gordhan said.
"The G-20 decided two years ago that future candidates for multi-lateral institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund should be merit based.
"We will we supporting her candidature when African finance ministers meet early next week at Addis Ababa, as well as when we have the brICS summit late next week," he said.
Gordhan said that nominations closed today and at this stage the other candidates were likely to be Columbian academic and former finance minister Jose Antonio Ocampo and Jeffrey Sachs, from the US.
An official US candidate is likely to be announced later today but Gordhan said there could be last minute surprises as well.
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said of the nomination that she was absolutely confident of success, but as this stage it would be premature for her to lay out her vision of where the World Bank should be taken.
She did however say that she shared the World Bank's current vision of fighting poverty with passion.
