Samantha Power among those who might replace Malpass as World Bank chief

17 February 2023 05:38 am

Samantha Power is among the names being floated by U.S. officials, climate change experts, and global development peers as possible candidate to replace David Malpass as the head of the World Bank, according to a Reuters news report. 

World Bank President Malpass this week unexpectedly said he would resign in June leaving open a job that oversees billions of dollars of funding and has a direct impact on poverty, climate change preparation, emergency aid and other issues in developing countries around the globe.

The bank has historically been headed by someone from the United States, the bank’s largest shareholder, while a European heads the International Monetary Fund, but developing countries and emerging markets are pushing to widen those choices.

According to the bank’s 2021 annual report, Malpass earned US$ 525,000 in annual net salary that year, and the bank made more than US$ 340,000 in annual contributions to a pension plan and other benefits.

Samantha Power, who currently leads the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), is a longtime human rights advocate, diplomat and former journalist. 

She served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations under President Barack Obama and won a Pulitzer Prize for her 2002 book “A Problem from Hell,” a study of the U.S. failure to prevent a number of genocides over the past century. The other names being floated are Rockefeller Foundation Chairman Rajiv Sha, President of the London School of Economics Minouche Shafik and Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Treasury Wally Adeyemo.