Ashraf Ghani

Ashraf Ghani is Chancellor of Kabul University and was Afghanistan's finance minister between 2002 and 2004.

Role in post-Taliban Afghanistan

Ashraf Ghani was recognized as the best finance minister of Asia in 2003 by Emerging Markets. During his tenure as finance minister of Afghanistan between July 2002 and December 2004, he carried out a series of extensive reforms, including the issue of a new currency in record time, computerization of the operations of treasury, institutionalization of the single treasury account, adoption of a policy of no-deficit financing, introduction of the budget as the central instrument of policy, centralization of revenue, reform of tariff system and overhaul of the customs, and instituting of regular reporting to the cabinet, the people of Afghanistan, and the international stakeholders as a tool of transparency and accountability. He broke new ground in coordination of donor’s assistance by requiring donors to select their interventions to three sectors, thereby bringing clarity and mutual accountability to their relations with their government counterparts, and preparing a developmental strategy that put the Afghans in the driver’s seat regarding accountability for their future.

On March 31-April 31, he presented a seven year program of public investment called Securing Afghanistan’s Future to an international conference in Berlin, attended by 65 finance and foreign ministers of the world. Described as the most comprehensive program ever prepared and presented by a poor country to the international community, Securing Afghanistan’s Future was prepared by a team of one-hundred experts working under supervision of a committee chaired by Mr. Ghani. The concept of a double-compact, between the donors and the government of Afghanistan on the one hand and between the government and people of Afghanistan on the other, underpinned the program of investment in Securing Afghanistan’s Future. The donors pledged $8.2 billions at the conference for the first three years of the program – the exact amount asked by the government -- and agreed that the government’s request for a total 7 year package of assistance of $27.5 billion was justified.

Focus on poverty eradication through creation of wealth and rights of citizenship has been at the heart of Mr. Ghani’s developmental approach. In Afghanistan, he is attributed with designing the National Solidarity Program, a program of bloc grants to villages where village council elected on the basis of secret ballot elections from men and women, decide both on their priorities and on mechanisms of implementation. The program currently covers 13,000 of the estimated 20, 000 villages of the country and is earning the ministry of rural development recognition as a global leader. The program is designed to be transformed into a sustainable mechanism of wealth creation in its second phase, when the social and institutional capitals built in phase one will provide the basis for generation of financial capital and continual investments in human capital. He also partnered with the ministry of communication to ensure that licenses for telecoms were granted on a fully transparent basis. As a result, the number of mobile phones in the country jumped from 100 in July 2002 to over a million at the end of 2005. Private investment in the sector exceeded $200 million and the telecom sector emerged as one of the major sectors of generation of revenue for government.

Background

Ashraf Ghani was born in Kabul in 1949, studied political science at the American University of Beirut, international affairs and anthropology at Columbia University ( where he earned his PhD) , and attended the Harvard-INSEAD and Stanford business schools leadership training program for the World Bank. He served on the faculty of Kabul University (1973-77), Aarhus University in Denmark (1977), University of California, Berkeley (1983), and Johns Hopkins University (1983-1991). His academic research was on state-building and social transformations. He undertook a year of fieldwork in Madrasas in Pakistan in 1985-86. He joined the World Bank in 1991, working on projects in East Asia and South Asia until 1996. In 1996, he pioneered the application of institutional and organizational analysis to macro processes of change and reform, working directly on the adjustment program of the Russian coal industry and carrying out reviews of the Bank’s country assistance strategies and structural adjustment programs globally.

He had worked intensively with the media during the first Gulf War, commenting on major radio and television programs and being interviewed by newspapers. After 9/11, he took leave without pay from the World Bank and engaged in intensive interaction with the media, appearing regularly on PBS’s News Hour as well as BBC, CNN, other television programs, the BBC, Public Radio, other radios, and writing for major newspapers. In November 2002, he accepted an appointment as a Special Advisor to the United Nations and assisted Mr. Lakhdar Brahimi, the Special Representative of the Secretary General, to prepare the Bonn Agreement, the process and document that provided the basis of transfer of power to the people of Afghanistan. Retuning after 24 years to Afghanistan in December 2001, he resigned from his posts at the UN and World Bank and joined the Afghan government as the chief advisor to President Karzai on February 1, 2002. He has worked on a pro bono basis and was among the first officials to disclose his assets. In this capacity, he worked on the preparation of the Loya Jirgas (grand assemblies) that elected president Karzai and approved the constitution. After the election of president Karzai directly by the people of Afghanistan in October 2004, Mr. Ghani declined to join the cabinet and asked to be appointed as chancellor of Kabul University. As chancellor of the University, he has been engaged in articulating the concept of shared governance among the faculty, students, and staff and advocating a vision of the university where men and women with skills and commitment to lead their country in the age of globalization can be trained.

Since joining the University, Mr. Ghani has resumed his research activities and is directing a program on state-effectiveness. This program has put forward a framework which proposes that the state should perform ten functions in the contemporary world in order to serve its citizens. This framework was discussed by leaders and managers of post-conflict transitions at a meeting sponsored by the UN and World Bank at the Greentree Estates in September 2005. The program also proposes that the vehicle of state-building or sovereignty strategies, underpinned by double compacts between the international community, government and the population of a country could be used as a basis for organizing aid and other interventions, and that a sovereignty index to measure state effectiveness should be compiled on an annual basis.

Mr. Ghani has been sought as a public speaker and in 2005 given the keynote speeches for a number of meetings including the American Bar Association’s International Rule of Law Symposium, the Trans-Atlantic Policy Network, the annual meeting of the Norwegian Government’s development staff, CSIS’ meeting on UN reform, the UN-OECD-World Bank’s meeting on Fragile States, and TEDGlobal. He has contributed to the Financial Times, International Herald Tribune, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.

See also

• Economy of Afghanistan

External Links

• Development in the Globalizing World: A Transformed Agenda? Ashraf Ghani, http://www1.worldbank.org/hdnetwork/External/de/AGhani.htm
• Post-Conflict Institution Building in Fragile States with Ashraf Ghani U.S. Institute of Peace Event, June 2005 (Audio)