Colin Bruce named to #2 post in World Bank's Africa department

21 June 2008

The World Bank's Country Director for Kenya, who was criticized over the Bank's portfolio in the country as well as a controversial leaked memo during the country's recent elections, will be the new Bank Director of Operations and Strategy for Africa.

Colin Bruce, the World Bank's Country Director for Kenya, Comoros, Rwanda, Eritrea, Somalia, & Seychelles, has been named the Bank's Director of Operations and Strategy for Africa. He moves from Nairobi to Washington, DC to take up a position the Financial Times (FT) calls the "de facto number two in the bank's Africa hierarchy." Obiageli Ezekweseli is the Bank's Vice President for Africa, the highest-ranking Africa-focused position.

Bruce came under fire from critics of the Kenyan government during his tenure for presiding over a nearly twofold increase in Bank disbursements to the country despite what the FT termed "persistent evidence of high-level graft." In March 2008, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) made available on its website a leaked report by the World Bank's Department of Institutional Integrity (INT) on evidence of corruption in Bank-funded projects in Kenya.

Under President Paul Wolfowitz, Bank lending to Kenya was temporarily curtailed in response to the corruption allegations, but ultimately restored as part of a new agreement to increase Bank monitoring of the government's efforts to fight against corruption in 2007.

The sense that Bruce might be too favorably inclined to the government of President Mwai Kibaki was intensified with the leaking of a memo in January 2008 during the political chaos that followed Kenya's flawed presidential elections. The memo, sent by Bruce to his superiors in Washington, seemed dismissive of the allegations of vote fraud that had been made by the majority of election monitors. While Bruce claimed that he was merely trying to strike a balance between the two sides, to most readers it appeared to take the side of Kibaki, who had had himself sworn in for a second term within an hour of the dubious declaration of election results.

The memo was leaked while Bruce was trying to help mediate the election dispute – a role that he probably should have avoided in the first place. It seems likely that, to some degree, Bruce became the subject of domestic political manipulations he was ill-placed to discern.

Bruce's case was not helped by reminders that he lived in a house the Bank was renting from Kibaki and his wife (though, to be fair, he inherited the lease from the previous World Bank country director).

Despite his cameo in Kenya's election controversy, Bruce probably gained greatest recognition in Kenya the year before when he was exposed trying to use his influence to get out of a speeding ticket.

Resources

• World Bank backs contentious director, by William Wallis, Financial Times, June 11, 2008 (FT website)
• World Bank leak suggests support for Kibaki in disputed Kenyan elections, Bank Information Center, January 11, 2008 (BIC website)
• Kenya and the World Bank editorial, Wall Street Journal, March 6, 2008 (WSJ website)
• Government of Kenya: Kenya Detailed Implementation Review Report, World Bank Dept. of Institutional Integrity, January 10, 2007 (WSJ website)