Kaberuka: Pushing for results in Africa

As minister of Finance and Economic Planning in Rwanda for the past eight years, Donald Kaberuka was instrumental in helping that country rebuild its society and economy.

As minister of Finance and Economic Planning in Rwanda for the past eight years, Donald Kaberuka was instrumental in helping that country rebuild its society and economy. Now many Africans are hoping he can do the same for the continent as a whole.

The 54-year-old British-trained economist took over as president of the African Development Bank earlier this month, replacing Omar Kabbaj of Morocco. Kaberuka is determined to make the bank, traditionally one of the smallest regional development lenders, a leading player in the global effort to combat poverty on the continent. He takes up his new post at a promising time, following the July agreement by the Group of Eight nations to increase aid to Africa by $25 billion.

Like his cohorts at the World Bank, Kaberuka talks not just about the volume of aid but about the need for the African bank to tie funds to measurable outputs in the areas of education, health care and living standards (see cover story, page 46). “The bank needs to reposition itself as a results-based institution,” he says in a telephone interview. “Development is not just a question of resources. They must be put to effective use.”

Kaberuka was born in Rwanda and studied at the University of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania before moving to Britain for his graduate studies. He obtained a Ph.D. in development economics from the London School of Economics and spent more than a decade in the private sector, including a stint as a commodities analyst at Morgan Grenfell in London.

As Rwanda’s Finance minister, he oversaw a program of reconstruction and governmental reform after the country’s 1994 genocide that has helped the economy grow by an average of 6.2 percent a year since 1997. For the past three years, he has led the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries ministerial network, lobbying for debt relief for Rwanda and 37 other nations. Debt relief provides critical help but is not the sole answer to Africa’s problems, experts say. Rwanda’s per capita income stands at just $300, and the World Bank projects that the country’s net debt-to-export ratio will remain above 150 percent for the next 20 years, even after the elimination of its debts to multilateral organizations.

“The fundamental thing is to promote economic growth on the continent,” Kaberuka contends. He wants the bank to increase its lending and grants for infrastructure projects like construction of roads, water systems and energy networks that will give African countries the capacity to enter the global trading system.

The bank also needs to step up its efforts to increase trade within Africa, Kaberuka says. The continent is home to a multitude of regional blocs, ranging from the South African Development Community, a loose grouping of 13 countries that aims to promote economic and political cooperation, to the Economic Community of West African States, which is seeking to develop a European-style common market among 15 countries, eight of which already share a currency, the CFA franc. The challenge for the bank is to tie these tentative integration efforts more closely together, Kaberuka says.

“Different parts of Africa are moving at different speeds,” he says. “I’m a strong believer in much more effective regional integration.”

The African bank, which provided $2.7 billion in loans and grants last year, will be scaling up its activities as part of the global development focus on the continent. Kaberuka says he is confident that the G-8 will deliver on its aid promises but that the key will be how that money is provided: Donor countries need to coordinate their efforts rather than spend money on individual pet projects. They also need to provide solid guarantees about the level of aid, he says, so African countries can develop long-term programs for improving education and combating diseases like malaria and AIDS.

“We need long-term commitment, not just for one or two years,” Kaberuka says.

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