FRIENDS FOREVER?

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has become increasingly bold and assertive in his vilification of what he describes as “a bankrupt ideology” that “has impoverished our thinking and hindered our progress.” In his address to ministers of finance and economic planning, who met early last week at the newly inaugurated conference hall of the African Union Commission (AUC), he urged fellow Africans to “liberate our minds from the neoliberal ideological shackles.”

Meles has been a lone voice in the African club of leaders in his outspoken denunciation of a neoliberal paradigm he argues wants to keep African states no more than “a night watchman.” Ever since he authored his doctoral dissertation in the mid 2000s, titled African Development: Dead Ends & New Beginnings, he has been bashing what he cites as an ideology imposed from the West that weakens the role states in Africa ought to play.

“We need an effective state that intervenes effectively but selectively wherever there is a market failure that hinders or slows down our growth,” Meles told close to 600 delegates attending a meeting jointly organised by the AU and UNECA, on Monday, March 26, 2012. “The ideology [neoliberalism], however, insists that infrastructure has to be built by the private sector and the state should limit itself to making these investments lucrative and largely risk free for the private sector.”

Interestingly, one of the delegates last week was Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, 58, (pictured above), now minister of Finance of Nigeria. Prior to her move back to Nigeria, she had served the World Bank as a managing director for four years, beginning 2007, while she is one of the three candidates hopeful to preside over the World Bank Group. Alongside the IMF, the World Bank is a multilateral lending agency, largely known for its keenness in promoting the liberal economic policy prescription Meles described last week as “bedtime stories.”