World Bank’s New President Skips China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ for Africa Trip

World Bank Group President David Malpass and IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde at the IMF and World Bank's 2019 Annual Spring Meetings, in Washington, D.C. on April 13, 2019. James Lawler Duggan/Reuters

WASHINGTON—Nearly 40 world leaders and scores of finance officials, including International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde, are gathered in Beijing for China’s second “One Belt, One Road” infrastructure summit, but the World Bank’s new president isn’t among them.

David Malpass, fresh from a senior Trump administration post at the U.S. Treasury Department, is instead making his first foreign trip as the World Bank’s leader to sub-Saharan Africa to highlight his vision for the bank’s poverty reduction and development agenda.