US, Africa in unprecedented race to head World Bank

WASHINGTON  The United States nominated a Korean-American Ivy League college head to lead the World Bank on Friday as African countries mounted an unprecedented challenge for the powerful job.
   President Barack Obama proposed Jim Yong Kim, the president of Dartmouth College and a physician who has worked for decades in global health issues, to lead the huge poverty-fighting institution.
   Hours earlier, Africa's leading economies South Africa, Angola and Nigeria announced their support for Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, a former high-level World Bank official, for the job.
   With both being called credible candidates to replace outgoing president Robert Zoellick, it promised to be the first-ever contested race for a job  traditionally decided by Washington, as the Bank's biggest shareholder.
   Thanks to a tacit agreement, the United States has always chosen the head of the World Bank, and has always named an American, while Europe has always named one of its own to head the International Monetary Fund.
   But that pact has triggered outrage from developing and emerging economies seeking greater representation to reflect their rising contributions to the global economy.
   The job is crucial, overseeing the 187-nation Bank's mission to provide financial and technical assistance to countries struggling to rise out of poverty.
   The Washington-based bank lent $57.3 billion last year and has more than 9,000 employees worldwide.
   The surprise choice of a physician little-known beyond academic and global health circles marked a break with Washington's usual candidates tapped from politics or Wall Street.
   A Harvard-trained doctor and anthropologist, Kim, 52, is the former director of the department of HIV/AIDS at the World Health Organization. He became the president of Dartmouth, in New Hampshire, in July 2009.
   "It's time for a development professional to lead the world's largest development agency," Obama said in a Rose Garden news conference with Kim at his side.
   "Jim has spent more than two decades working to improve conditions in developing countries around the world," the president said.
   Obama said the World Bank's mission of lifting nations from poverty to prosperity "makes the world stronger and more secure for everybody.
   "I believe that nobody is more qualified to carry out that mission than Doctor Jim Kim."
   The US nomination of Kim, who was born in Seoul and moved with his family to the United States at the age of five, makes him an instant favorite to get the bank's top job.
   France, another big Bank stakeholder, appeared supportive.
   "The principle is that there is this choice by the United States at the World Bank and the Europeans at the IMF. There is no reason at this point to change that," French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told AFP.
   But Okonjo-Iweala could mount a stiff challenge. She is a respected former World Bank managing director who joined Nigeria's government as finance minister in August.
   She unveiled her candidacy earlier on Friday in Pretoria, flanked by counterparts from South Africa and Angola.   "I consider the World Bank a very important institution for the world and particularly for developing countries deserving of the best leadership," she said.    "So I look forward to a contest of very strong candidates, and am I confident? Absolutely."
   "I have long experience in the World Bank, in government and in diplomacy and I look forward to giving you my vision at the appropriate time," she said.
   Two others have also been in the race for the job, as self-declared candidates: former Colombian finance minister and central bank chief Jose Antonio Ocampo, and American development economist Jeffrey Sachs.
   But Sachs withdrew on Friday and endorsed Kim.
   "Jim Kim is a superb nominee for WB," Sachs tweeted.
 

Porsche unveils 21 million naira luxury 911 sports car

LAGOS German car-maker Porsche officially opened a new car dealership on Friday in the heart of Lagos' wealthiest district, Victoria Island, a place with one of the world's highest concentrations of millionaires. There are already dealerships specialising in Aston Martin and Lamborghini, but Porsche hopes to capitalise on a promise of providing sturdier vehicles that can cope with Nigeria's hard roads. Its presence is being seen as a vote of confidence in the West African nation's fast-growing economy. 

•  Porsche also plans to set up an operation in the capital Abuja, where roads are newly built - a better market for the 911 sports model - and where politicians are amongst the world's most highly paid.        
•  "The African continent, and in particular Nigeria, is of growing importance to us at Porsche," the company's Middle East and Africa head George Wills said, unveiling the new 911 model.    High-end goods producers are increasingly targeting sub-Saharan Africa, as its economic growth starts to dwarf other continents and rich Western countries face a slowdown.
•  Nigeria, Africa's second biggest economy, grew 7.68 percent in the last quarter of 2011, one of the fastest in the world.
•  Two of Africa's top five richest men are Nigerian.       
• "We're quite confident the numbers will be strong," Wills said in front of the new 911 sports car, after a Porsche official revved its engine for flashing cameras.        
•  "It's difficult to put a finite number on it, but certainly enough to give a return on this investment," he added.
• Porsche Nigeria general manager Julian Hardy estimates 200 Nigerians own Porsches - the dealership had been running prior to the official launch since July and sold an undisclosed number, and rich Nigerians have been importing them for decades.         
• At a party to celebrate Porsche's launch, Nigerians in sharp suits and cocktail dresses drank martinis and danced around the 911 display model to live music.
• "You can drive around Lagos ... then take your car to the race track and become a beast and go wild," said Emmanuel Ngala, an IT consultant who owns a Cayenne 4x4 and is buying a 911.      The firm's sales target for 2012 is 100 cars, and it hopes to hit a stable sales rate of around 300 a year, compared with 800 in South Africa. Average prices currently range between 21 million naira ($133,000) to 30 million naira ($190,000).    
•  Lagos embraces some of Africa's most expensive real estate alongside some of its most crowded slums.
• The car park at the Porsche show rooms has several models.     
• "It's a nice car," said employee Mohammed Ibrahim, as he hosed down a chrome coloured Cayenne and shined it to a sparkle with a cloth. On his 20,000 naira, a month salary it would take him 125 years to afford one if he did not buy anything else.        
•  "God might give me a car like this one day. He can do that, if he wants to. He can do anything," he said, grinning.   
•  Sandwiched between the lagoon that led Porteguese sailors to name this city 'Lagos' and the Atlantic, Victoria Island is a place of fund managers in fine woollen suits and oil oligarchs.     
• The faces of glamorous women smile from billboards advertising mobile phones. Luxury 4x4s are everywhere.         
• Other luxury brands have however made it big in Nigeria. It is a significant African market for LVMH. Most bars can get you Moet & Chandon champagne or Hennessy brandy, which women sip next to their Louis Vuitton handbags.
•  The "Auto Lounge" in Victoria Island lets you enjoy an expensive drink overlooking a garage of Aston Martins.
•  Paris-based magazine Jeune Afrique last year placed Nigeria at the top of Africa's champagne consumers, guzzling 593,000 bottles in 2010, 50 percent more than richer rival South Africa. ($1 = 157.6000 naira)  

Fake bride and groom walk down aisle in handcuffs

LONDON A bogus Polish bride and her groom were led down the aisle in handcuffs after Border Agency officers swooped on their sham marriage.
Polish citizen Helena Puchalska, 20, was dramatically arrested by unexpected ‘guests’ in her wedding dress as she said her vows to Pakistani Asif Ali, 31.
This week Puchalska was jailed for 15 months while Ali was caged for two years after they admitted taking part in the sham wedding.
Sentencing the pair at Northampton Crown Court, Judge Richard Bray said: “You were caught undergoing a sham marriage for the purposes of immigration.
“This is a serious offence, not only because it breaches our immigration laws but because of the aggravating feature that it strikes at the sanctity of marriage.
“Such offences are still prevalent today as anyone who reads the newspapers knows.
“Sentences of some length are needed for such blatant and cynical offending.
“You, Ali, were the instigator and had most to gain. You are intelligent and knew perfectly well what you were doing. You, Puchalska, went along with this enterprise for money.”
The court heard Ali was facing deportation and paid Puchalska £2,500 to be his wife so he could remain in Britain by marrying an EU Citizen.
But officers from the UK Border Agency’s Criminal and Financial Investigations Team arrested the pair as they attempted to tie the knot at Northampton Guildhall on December 22 last year.
After they were arrested the couple protested their innocence claiming they fell in love after meeting in a nightclub in March last year.
Ali told officers he proposed at his home in October after cooking Puchalska a curry and serving her vodka in honour of her Polish heritage.
The court heard Ali did not know the name of Puchalska’s home town and said all she had told him about Poland was that it was cold, had forests and that Polish food consisted of soup and ham.
He even misspelt the name of his wife-to-be on the marriage forms.
Meanwhile all Puchalska could say about Ali was that his hobby was driving.
The couple admitted conspiring to facilitate a breach of the UK’s immigration laws when they appeared at Northampton Crown Court on Tuesday.
A registrar reported the wedding to the UK Border Agency after he became suspicious about the lack of interaction between the couple when they attended a meeting to plan the ceremony.
Police discovered a note in Ali’s car intended for his real girlfriend.
It read: “I married Hela Puchalska Bcoz (sic) of papers and I love Anna a lot. I make deal with her for £2,500.”
Joe Spicer, prosecuting, said: “There was a ceremony planning meeting on December 19 at which the registrar became concerned this wedding did not appear to be genuine.
“She noticed Ali was answering all the questions and the bride appeared to be entirely disinterested in what was to take place. There was also no intimacy or contact between them.”
After the hearing, a UK Border Agency spokesman said: “As they pleaded guilty, the notes were not subject to handwriting analysis so we cannot say they were definitively written by Ali but it’s true to say they were found in the boot of his car.”
Inspector Andy Radcliffe, of the UK Border Agency’s Criminal and Financial Investigations team, said: “This was a marriage of convenience – convenient for Puchalska because it would have lined her pockets and convenient for Ali because it was a means to UK residency.”