Sudan’s war is wrecking a lot, including its central bank – a legacy of trailblazing African American economist and banker Andrew Brimmer
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Monday, June 5, 2023
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The fighting is even wreaking havoc on the country’s central bank.
Key Points:
- The fighting is even wreaking havoc on the country’s central bank.
- In late April 2023, a video surfaced of a branch of the Central Bank of Sudan in Khartoum on fire.
- What many people may not know is that, in 1956, three U.S. economists laid the groundwork for the Central Bank of Sudan.
- My forthcoming book examines African American involvement in Sudan and their impact on this transnational relationship.
Brimmer’s road to economics
- His father alternated between manual jobs, from chopping cotton to shipping out grain to support the family, and his mother grew much of the food the family ate.
- “So we were typically poor, but not dirt-poor,” Brimmer told interviewers for a Federal Reserve Board oral history project in 2007.
- Brimmer then earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in economics in 1950 and 1951 from the University of Washington and in 1957 earned a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard.
Mr. Brimmer Goes to Sudan
- When Sudan became independent of British colonial rule in 1956, it established diplomatic relations with the United States and requested U.S. help in setting up a central bank.
- That July, officials at the U.S. State Department asked Brimmer, who had been working as an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York since June 1955, and two senior-level Federal Reserve members to participate in a technical mission to Sudan to help with that request.
- The government of Sudan established the central bank in July 1959 based on their work.
A familiar face in an unfamiliar land
- Brimmer’s diary from the trip — housed at Harvard University — offers a glimpse into some of his other experiences.
- He attended festivities marking Sudan’s first anniversary of independence and attended the first match of the inaugural African Cup of Nations soccer tournament.
- One woman, Brimmer wrote, “wanted to know why I could not speak Arabic!” She was apparently in disbelief that he was not Sudanese.
A path to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors
- And in a historic move, Johnson nominated him to the Federal Reserve Bank’s Board of Governors on Feb. 26, 1966.
- That body oversees the 12 Reserve banks in the system and works to promote a fair consumer financial services market.
- After his Senate confirmation, Brimmer joined the board on March 9, 1966, becoming the first Black member in its history.
- That was unlike other members of the Federal Reserve Board.