16 August 2011
By Howard Schneider
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala returns to her former role as Nigeria
Outside Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala’s office at the World Bank, a cardboard manikin holds a placard reading “Put Food First.” Food security was among her priorities as a managing director of the bank, a position she left recently to take over this week as finance minister of Nigeria – her second time in that role. Agriculture will still be among her top concerns. But in a recent conversation she spoke about the much broader problems faced in managing the finances of Africa’s most populous country – the tension, for example, to control government deficits that have become unusually large for an oil exporting country, while also making the investments needed to encourage a more diversified economy.A rebellion in the oil-producing region waxes and wanes – calmer at the moment after a recent amnesty for rebels, but hardly gone. Growth is strong, but so is inflation. With its oil wealth and population,
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