The World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund (WBG and IMF) were created in 1944 when most of Africa was still colonised. No fundamental changes were made to these institutions when they first held their Annual Meetings on the African continent in Nairobi 50 years ago, and no such changes were announced at the second Africa-based Annual Meetings in Marrakech, Morocco, in October 2023 that would lead to a decolonised global financial architecture any time soon (see Dispatch Annuals 2023).
The Global South faces severe structural economic deficiencies that weaken its economic sovereignty and put it at the mercy of a neo-colonial international trade, finance and investment architecture, as discussed in the May report titled Just Transition: A Climate, Energy and Development Vision for Africa, which I co-authored as part of the Independent…
