World Bank Is A Worthy Partner Of Ghana’s Development — Otumfuo
Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, Asantehene, has hailed the World Bank’s tremendous support to Ghana’s development.
He said the history of Ghana’s development cannot be complete without the invaluable role of the Bank.
Otumfuo said this when the World Bank’s Vice President for Western and Central Africa, Ousmane Diagana called on the King at the Manhyia Palace in Kumasi on January 10, 2025, to discuss issues relating to the delayed Kumasi Urban Mobility and Accessibility Project (KUMAP).
Past engagements
The Asantehene mentioned that his relationships with the World Bank dates back to many years traversing three past presidents of the bank.
He recalled how his engagements with the Bank brought some amount of relief to Ghana.
“I am aware that when I came [ to Washington] last time in 2019, I discussed generation problems, energy generation problems where we had an excess of about 600 million at that time for energy level we had not used. I engaged the president to find a solution to that in terms of avoiding that from eating into our budget and now I’m told it’s about 1.5million.”
Otumfuo Osei Tutu said at that time, he requested a grant from the World Bank to deal with the crisis as well as technical expertise which were all granted.
“At that time, I asked your President to give me a grant to cover that while we got technical assistance to plan to export the excess energy to Mail and others. I think we have about 5,000MW installed and only using 3,000MW.”
The Asantehene hinted that he will undertake further discussions with the Bank over the remaining excess capacity.
School feeding
Otumfuo also mentioned how his intervention resulted in the Bank restoring the $180m grant to the School Feeding Programme in 2019.
“We’ve done that with the school feeding which I appreciate. I remember when we talked to them about the withdrawal of the $180 million at the time and they told me to take it along when returning to Ghana.”
Relationship
For his part, Mr Diagana said the Bank has benefitted from the wise counsel of the King, and expressed gratitude to him.
“We could not be in Accra without asking to be here in Kumasi.Thank you for your leadership and guidance you continue to provide to the World Bank,” he stated.
Accompanying the Vice President for the meeting were Robert Taliercio, Country Director, Michelle Keane, Operations Manager, Madhu Raghunath, Practice Manager, Urban Development, Resilience and Land, Dhruva Sahai, Senior Energy Specialist/Program Leader and Akua Pokuaa Timpabi, Transport Specialist.
The team was led by key officials from the Ashanti Regional Coordinating Council including the Chief Director, Michael Owusu Amoako, the Regional Economic Planning Officer, Beatrice Kwarteng and the Regional Director, DUR, Francis Gambrah.
