Former Zimbabwean minister of finance Simba Makoni was due in South Africa this Friday in a bid to shore up support for his campaign to head the African Development Bank.
Makoni, who ran the Zimbabwean economy between 2000 and 2002, is Southern Africa’s preferred candidate for the post, and has the backing of seven Southern African Development Community (SADC) countries, including South Africa.
Lobbying is intensifying ahead of the bank’s May 18 and 19 board meeting, which will decide on a successor for Omar Kabbaj, who is stepping down after 10 years in the job.
Among other frontrunners are Nigerian Olabisi Ogunjobi, a 20-year veteran of the bank, whose candidacy is supported by most major West African players, and Ghanaian Kingsley Amoako, who heads the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Africa and is supported by Zambia, Uganda and Ethiopia.
At the time of his appointment to Robert Mugabe’s Cabinet Makoni was viewed a reformer who could help prevent Zimbabwe’s slide toward economic collapse. He quit in 2002 over what people sympathetic to him say was frustration with his inability to persuade Mugabe and his Cabinet to take urgent action on the economy.
That record may not help his campaign, as regional heavyweights like Nigeria line up behind their own candidates, reminding funders such as the United States and Japan that his name appears — or appeared — on European and US “smart sanctions” lists, which targeted the Zimbabwean political elite with travel and banking restrictions.
Ogunjobi’s supporters have been quick to suggest that he will be a more palatable choice than Makoni for the bank’s international shareholders. The Economic Community of West African States’s (Ecowas) handling of the constitutional crisis in Togo is, they have told journalists, in stark contrast to SADC’s dithering over the economic and political crisis in Zimbabwe and Ecowas expects to be duly rewarded for it.