World Bank Group

• LITTLE ROCK, Ark., Nov. 13, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Heifer International announced the appointment of four new members to its Board of Directors: Smriti Canakapalli, Brandi DeCarli, Tanja Havemann and Atul Satija.
• "We are incredibly excited to harness the passions and expertise of our four newest board members, who each bring valuable experience from relevant sectors to this work," said Surita Sandosham, Heifer International President and CEO.
• Heifer International team members across the globe implement the Board's values and policies and, in turn, help build inclusive economies that empower millions.
• At least one director lives in each of the international program areas where Heifer carries out its work.

• XI'AN, China, Nov. 13, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- LONGi, a global leader in solar technology, today announced that Li Zhenguo, company founder and president, is a featured speaker at the upcoming Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in San Francisco on November 15.
• "It is an honor to be invited to speak about equity in sustainable energy," said Li Zhenguo.
• "I am grateful that the APEC organizers put equitable sustainability on the program," said Li Zhenguo.
• The annual APEC CEO Summit will be held in San Francisco, California, November 14-16 at the Moscone Center West.

• The World Bank, and the diplomatic and donor community writ large, follow closely what happens in Ugandan politics.
• It took three months for the bank to react and issue the statement.
• As a social anthropologist, I have researched international aid in eastern Africa and particularly followed the relationship between the World Bank and Uganda since 2006.
• Despite its insistence on national ownership of its projects, the World Bank uses its lending portfolio to govern and control its clients.

Presidential term limits

• The real reason for cutting aid, in my opinion, was politics.
• The World Bank was frustrated when President Yoweri Museveni lifted the presidential term limit to seek re-election again.
• The recent reaction to the anti-homosexuality act thus demonstrates a continuity in how the World Bank responds to domestic political affairs.

Market reforms

• The bank could make loans conditional on the recipient state privatising state-owned enterprises or liberalising the economy.
• For instance, Museveni bought into a lot of the structural reform programmes which included market reforms and power sector development.
• This is in contrast to Ethiopia, which until very recently has been considered more resistant to World Bank proposed reforms.

Governance reforms

• The World Bank’s power and control don’t just lie in the ability to decide what to fund and when to stop funding.
• The World Bank, and indeed donors in general, always emphasise the principle of national ownership, even as their policies undermine it.
• And indirect governance structures imply that client governments appear both as objects to be shaped by donor policies and as subjects with whom agreements are made.

What next

• Nor did lobbying and arm-twisting by international donors, the US and the EU among others, persuade the government to kill the bill.
• More actors and emerging economies are becoming increasingly active as sources of financing, such as China, the Gulf states, Russia, and private actors.
• These are potentially replacing traditional western donors, marking a shift to more geopolitical rivalry on the African continent.

Jon Harald Sande Lie receives funding from the Research Council of Norway for the research project 'Public-Private Development Interfaces in Ethiopia' (grant no. 315356).

• We took advantage of our technological vocation and combined the best we have in our payments architecture with what the new exchange rate framework made possible, in a totally innovative solution", he adds.
• This way, the bank is able to credit the remittance amount directly to the beneficiary's current account.
• For the executive director of exchange at BS2, Carlos Eduardo Andrade Jr., the opening a non-resident account was facilitated by the Brazilian exchange rate mark.
• "With this, we respond to the international and national market, putting into practice the international use of the Real (BRL)", he states.