In today’s post I will explore one of the most influential global actors that affects the politics of water systems in Africa: The World Bank.

The World Bank has, since the early 1970’s, been one of the most influential institutions that has provided funding to African countries to help them expand and develop. Founded by various economists in 1944, such as John Maynard Keynes, the institution was founded with intentions to assist developing countries by providing them with the capital necessary to invest in poverty reduction and infrastructure improvement. The World Bank still follows its founding function. If you look on their website under “What We Do” the organization provides the following definition: “We provide a wide array of financial products and technical assistance, and we help countries share and apply innovative knowledge and solutions to the challenges they face” (World Bank Website).

However, the World Bank is often under scrutiny by many politicians and academics, and justly so. It has built a reputation as serving significant western political agendas by convincing African states to agree to certain terms as a means of securing desirable funding. Normally, this takes the condition of agreeing to privatize the water systems of a certain part of a country, as much of the time “a ‘highly indebted poor country’ cannot borrow capital from the World Bank or IMF without a domestic water privatization policy as a pre-condition” (Goldman, 2007).

Many financiers and economists who follow Neoliberal ways of thinking argue that allowing market mechanisms to moderate water distributions will improve efficiencies, just as they have in the Global North. Some researchers have faith in the agreements the World Bank creates with African countries, such as the New Partnership for African Development (“NEPAD”) it worked out with leading African governments that “is a promise by African leaders to deliver good governance, peace and security in return for increased foreign investment” (Owusu, 2003).

Still, many express concern over the growing influence it holds over politics in certain African countries. Harrison, 2005 asserts that “since the early 1980s, the Bank has pursued a range of strategies to restructure African states in ways which reduced state capacity and the scope for public action.” This move to “roll back” raises questions regarding why the World Bank would be so concerned regarding the current state of political affairs of a country it grants funding to, and why the political structure it advocates for is one that is less centralized with weaker government.

The World Bank often claims that it advocates for open public debate regarding the needs of a community, and stresses the importance of public policy participation. However, Beckman, 1991 declares that the World Bank does not truly dedicate itself to finding true consensus in local government, but rather employs tactics such as “fictitious consensus mongering, dodging real issues of division, reducing major political divisions to technical ones, and ignoring or delegitimising opposition to its politics” in order to undermine opinions against them and to further their agenda. It seems to work, too, as many people are willing to believe the World Bank if it claims it knows what is best for a community or that opposition to them is based on ignorance.

Notably, it appears that the primary factor that decides allocation of World Bank funds may be the political agendas of western governments in a certain country or area. Certain governments have significant influence on the board of the World Bank, especially the United States, and there also remains significant interest in the organization determined by large multinational water companies. Therefore, many studies following the flow of funds have recognized that “aid allocations are substantially influenced by donors’ domestic political considerations, including commercial advantage and foreign policy objectives such as migration and terrorism” (Harrigan, et al., 2006). If this is true, it would seem the World Bank serves more as a means of reforming African countries into a structure that can be made profitable for Western countries.

The World Bank also has a track record of influencing global multilateral treaties and conferences, and seeks to be largely influential in the school of thought pertaining to international politics and development of countries in the Global South. Goldman, 2007 notes how the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development “read much like a World Bank policy paper, and a wish-list for the world’s largest service sector firms: Water privatization is the best policy to tackle the global South’s poverty and water-delivery problems.” It seems, then, the World Bank has been extremely successful in promoting its agenda to politicians by garnering support in its line of neoliberal developmental thought.

There is no doubt that there are many in this academic line of thought who agree that privatization is the best system for Africa to develop, and there is plenty of research to defend their arguments. However, it raises questions of intent when it seems that privatization may also be used to create a mechanism by which western countries can exploit and profit from business within certain African countries as they develop.