Jim Yong Kim has announced that he is resigning as president of the World Bank, three years ahead of schedule. The announcement surprised many: Kim was re-elected to a second term two years ago to avoid the unseemly fight that is likely to accompany selection of his successor. Kim's departure raises fundamental questions about how the World Bank president is chosen, and whether practices that have guided that process need to be reassessed. It is time to make the appointment process more democratic and meritocratic.
The World Bank was set up in the aftermath of World War II and was intended to be one of the pillars of the postwar economic order. Today, it is the world's second-largest development bank. Its members include virtually all governments, and it provides low-cost loans for development projects around the globe. In 2018, it made $66 billion in commitments to developing country governments and private sector investment projects.
When Kim was chosen by U.S. President Barack Obama to become the organization's 12th president, he was president of Dartmouth University and had a background in global health issues, previously serving as chair of the global health and social medicine department at Harvard Medical School and executive director of Partners in Health, a nonprofit organization that took modern medical science to the world's least developed countries. It was a relatively thin resume for the leader of the world's leading development lender, especially when compared to those of rival candidates, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who twice served as Nigeria's finance minister, and Jose Antonio Ocampo, a former minister of public finance and credit and minister of agriculture in Colombia, as well as United Nations undersecretary general for economic and social affairs.