On the eve of the World Bank Group – International Monetary Fund Spring Meetings, World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim will discuss how we must fundamentally shift development finance to meet the aspirations of the world’s 7 billion people and become the first generation in history to end extreme poverty.
Jim Yong Kim (@JimYongKim), M.D., Ph.D., is the 12th President of the World Bank Group. Soon after he assumed his position in July 2012, the organization established two goals to guide its work: to end extreme poverty by 2030; and to boost shared prosperity, focusing on the bottom 40% of the population in developing countries. In September 2016, the World Bank Group Board unanimously reappointed Kim to a second five-year term as President.
During his first term, the World Bank Group supported the development priorities of countries at levels never seen outside a financial crisis and, with our partners, achieved two successive, record replenishments of the World Bank Group’s fund for the poorest. The institution also launched several innovative financial instruments including facilities to address infrastructure needs, prevent pandemics, and help the millions of people forcibly displaced from their homes by climate shocks, conflict, and violence.
Kim’s career has revolved around health, education, and delivering services to the poor. Before joining the World Bank Group, Kim, a physician and anthropologist, served as the President of Dartmouth College and held professorships at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health. From 2003 to 2005, as director of the World Health Organization’s HIV/AIDS department, he led the “3 by 5” initiative, the first-ever global goal for AIDS treatment, which greatly to expand access to antiretroviral medication in developing countries. In 1987, Kim co-founded Partners In Health, a non-profit medical organization that now works in poor communities on four continents. Kim has received a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, was recognized as one of America’s “25 Best Leaders” by U.S. News & World Report, and was named one of TIME magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World”.
Zeinab Badawi (@bbczeinabbadawi) is a Sudanese-British television and radio journalist, currently the presenter of Global Questions and Hard Talk for the BBC. Through her own production company she has produced and presented many programmes, including currently the definitive TV series of African history in association with UNESCO. Zeinab is one of the best-known broadcast journalists working in the field today. In 2009 she was awarded International TV Personality of the Year by the Association of International Broadcasters, and was named in Powerlist 2012 and 2015 as one of Britain’s top 100 most influential members of the black community. She is the current Chair of the Royal African Society, a Queen’s appointment to the Board of the Historic Royal Palaces, a trustee of BBC Media Action (the charitable arm of the BBC), a Vice-President of the United Nations Association UK, and a board member of the African Union Foundation. She is also a member of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council for Africa.
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Podcast
A podcast of this event is available to download from Rethinking Development Finance.
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Transcript
A transcript of Dr Kim's lecture is available to download:
Rethinking Development Finance (pdf)