World Bank's Wolfensohn Highlights Challenges, Increased Role for Private Sector

Describing his organization's mission as one focused on issues of poverty and equity, World Bank president James D. Wolfensohn (MBA '59) addressed the National Press Club in March. Wolfensohn took the helm of the Bank in 1995 after a successful Wall Street career. In a unanimous board vote last fall, he became only the third Bank president to be reappointed to a second five-year term. Excerpts from his speech, "The Challenges Facing the World Bank in the 21st Century," appear below.

World Poverty

"Today we have over six billion people on the planet. Three billion of them live on under $2 a day, and a billion two hundred million of them live on under $1 a day in what we call absolute poverty. Two billion of them don't have any electrical power. A billion and a half don't have any water. One hundred and twenty-five million kids don't go to school. There are too many people dying due to lack of vaccines, and the world is showing an increasing inequity in terms of the distribution of assets and income. The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer."

Digital Revolution

"We're entering a new age of global development -- not the agricultural revolution and not the industrial revolution, but a digital and electronic revolution, which will have enormous implications on where we go both in the world in general and in the developing world in particular."

Bilateral Involvement

"In our fifty-year history, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were the big guys on the block. We had the money. We were helping to reform a world after World War II and gradually mutated into an institution to assist in development. But we are no longer alone, and happily so. We have been joined by bilateral agencies, regional banks, government-sponsored development agencies, and civil society. In this time period, the flow of funds to developing countries has grown from $30 billion to $300 billion. So you have no longer just the Bank and the Fund giving a lecture from the mountaintop. The private sector has taken an increasingly important role in terms of economic life and of development."

Developed and Developing Countries

"The challenge of the next 25 years is not a challenge of us sitting in developed countries seeing what we can dole out to developing countries. If you think about the links of finance, economics, health, migration, trade, crime, drugs, and peace, pretty soon you are forced to the conclusion that what happens in the developing world is a significant issue for our children. In fact, I would say for my children that their peace and their future depends on the challenge of what happens with the 6.8 billion people just for the next 25 years."

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