Who are the Commission for Africa?

Issue: 107

The commission was chaired by Bob Geldof and headed by prime minister Tony Blair, chancellor of the exchequer Gordon Brown, and minister for international development Hilary Benn.

It also included: Michel Camdessus, who as managing director of the IMF until February 2000 was behind scores of Structual Adjustment Programmes

Canadian finance minister Ralph Goodale, who represents Canada, Ireland and a group of Caribbean countries on the International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC);

Nancy Kassebaum Baker, former US Republican senator for Kansas, married to Howard Baker, Ronald Reagans chief of staff, whose Baker Plan to save the US banks increased Third World debt by 20 percent in two years;

President Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania, who has consistently steered Tanzania towards reconciliation with the IMF and the World Bank;

Prime minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, who has driven Ethiopia towards the full adoption of World Bank and IMF programmes.

Trevor Manuel, architect of the neo-liberalisation of economic policy in South Africa since 1994, first as minister of trade and industry, then as minister of finance;

Linah Mohohlo, Botswana Central Bank governor, who has worked for the IMF, and serves on the boards of major corporations in Botswana and abroad;

Tidjiane Thiam, a senior executive of global insurance giant Aviva, which owns Norwich Union; a member of the World Bank Institutes External Advisory Committee, 1998 World Economic Forum (Davos) ‘Global Leader for Tomorrow’ and member of the 1999 Davos ‘Dream Cabinet’;

Kingsley Amoako, who went from the World Bank to the UN Economic Commission for Africa;

Dr Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka, the convenor of Tanzania’s Local Entrepreneurs Initiative (TALE), a voluntary group mobilising Tanzanians to form joint venture companies with overseas investors, and a director of a number of private companies dedicated to ‘encouraging entrepreneurship in the marketing of agricultural commodities’;

Mr Fola Adeola, a director of Guaranty Trust Bank Pic, and deputy general manager of the Continental Merchant Bank Limited (1986-1990);

Ji Peiding, NPC Standing Committee member and vice-chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, China;

Dr William S Kalema, ‘leader of the Ugandan private sector’, chairman of the Development Finance Company of Uganda and of its related financial institutions, including DFCU Bank, a commercial bank, and DFCU Leasing, the leading leasing company in Uganda;

The Director of Policy and Research and probably author of the Commission report is Sir Nicholas Stern. He was responsible for Russia and Eastern Europe at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in the 1990s, replaced the sacked Joseph Stiglitz as World Bank Chief Economist in 2001, and then became head of the British government’s economic service.