This ProPublica and Foreign Policy article focuses on IFC investments, such as those in 5-star hotels, shopping malls and mines, and concludes that profit for the World Bank is at least as important as its stated mission of reducing global poverty
Can You Fight Poverty With a Five-Star Hotel?
ProPublica and Foreign Policy | By Cheryl Strauss Einhorn
Posted: We Jan. 2, 2013, 12:00 AM
Accra is a city of choking red dust where almost no rain falls for three months at a time and clothes hung out on a line dry in 15 minutes. So the new five-star Mövenpick hotel affords a haven of sorts in Ghana’s crowded capital, with manicured lawns, amply watered vegetation, and uniformed waiters gliding poolside on roller skates to offer icy drinks to guests. A high concrete wall rings the grounds, keeping out the city’s overflowing poor who hawk goods in the street by day and the homeless who lie on the sidewalks by night.
The Mövenpick, which opened in 2011, fits the model of a modern international luxury hotel, with 260 rooms, seven floors, and 13,500 square feet of retail space displaying $2,000 Italian handbags and other wares. But it is exceptional in at least one respect: It was financed by a combination of two very different entities: a multibillion-dollar investment company largely controlled by a Saudi prince, and the poverty-fighting World Bank.