By Duncan Miriri
NAIROBI (Reuters) -Ivory Coast’s Wautabouna Ouattara has become the third director for Sub-Saharan Africa on the International Monetary Fund’s executive board as the lender of last resort boosts the region’s voice in its policy making processes.
The new position on the executive board, which oversees the day-to-day business of the fund, brings the total number of executive board members to 25.
“The addition of a third African chair to our Board reflects the continent’s tremendous progress in developing its human and economic potential,” IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said in a statement on Friday.
The formal ascension of an extra representative for the region to the board followed an election, the IMF said. It is its first expansion since 1992, when two posts were created for the former Soviet Union countries after the break-up of the Soviet bloc.
Africa’s 54 countries, the biggest bloc by number of countries among the IMF’s 191 members, hosts 18% of the world’s population but only holds 6.5% of IMF voting rights. Sub-Saharan Africa’s voting share accounts for around half of that.
The new post for the region on the board was announced in Marrakech, Morocco, a year ago, but critics say it does not go far enough in terms of addressing the region’s needs, as it navigates through a debt crisis.
The IMF has been playing a crucial role in the management of economies in Sub-Saharan Africa in recent years, as countries like Zambia and Ghana restructured their debts, and others like Kenya turned to the Fund for higher liquidity support due to elevated debt interest repayments.
(Reporting by Duncan Miriri, graphic by Sumanta Sen, editing by Karin Strohecker, William Maclean)
