HARARE – Britain has named a World Bank executive as its next ambassador to Zimbabwe, a move seen as a positive signal to the new government of President Emmerson Mnangagwa.
The centerpiece of Zimbabwe’s economic turnaround strategy is securing debt relief and a re-arrangement of its international financial obligations while pursuing bailouts from multinational institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
Melanie Robinson replaces the much-reviled Catriona Laing, accused by pro-democracy activists of actively working to prop-up Mnangagwa’s regime in London while paying lip service to human rights abuses and a militarisation of the Zimbabwean state.
Robinson will take up her new posting in January 2019, just as Laing becomes Britain’s top diplomat in Nigeria.
A senior European diplomat in Harare, reflecting on the choice of Robinson, said: “I guess it shows that all the UK has been accused of is not untrue.”
Robinson might have been drafted in to handhold Mnangagwa’s government as it tries to unlock international finance, but United States sanctions and scepticism about Mnangagwa’s regime in Washington almost guarantee that such efforts will not be without complications.
Robinson is a married mother of two. She has previously worked as a programme officer for the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) in Mozambique (2002-2004). Several postings later, she returned to Africa for the DFID in Ethiopia (2012-2015) before joining the World Bank as Executive Director for the UK.
