THE World Bank’s record on alleviating poverty in Africa has been patchy at best. Yet even its staunchest supporters must be holding their heads in their hands at its latest misjudgement.
Its model project in Africa, held up as an example of how oil, gas or mining projects can benefit the poor, has turned into a fiasco. The bank teamed up with a consortium led by oil company Exxon Mobil to develop oilfields in southern Chad, build a pipeline to transport the oil through neighbouring Cameroon to the Atlantic coast, and plough revenues from the project into poverty-reduction schemes. The…
