While Africa battles to keep the wolf from the door, Europe’s leaders are lining up to keep Wolfowitz from the World Bank.

Germany and France are "underwhelmed" at the prospect of the US Deputy Secretary of Defense - widely regarded as the architect of America's war in Iraq - taking the helm of an institution which is supposed to be battling only poverty. The 2 billion who, according to the Bank itself, live on less than $2 a day deserve a champion with the relevant know how, say the dissenters.

"We need someone with professional experience in helping people to escape from poverty, which Mr Wolfowitz does not have," said Professor Jeffrey Sachs – the Nobel Prize-winning director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and adviser to Kofi Annan.

Dig a little deeper, however, and the resistance to Paul Wolfowitz's nomination for the World Bank post by US President George W Bush involves more than an objection to an amateur taking the post.

Earlier this year, James Wolfensohn, the outgoing chief of the Wold Bank, told Times Online that it was the organisation’s job "to enhance security for poor people by reducing their vulnerability to ill health and economic shocks".

But parts of what he might term "old" Europe will always associate Mr Wolfowitz with the "shock and awe" tactics that were used to break the will of Baghdad. The creative role the World Bank aspires to, in crafting hope and a future for the impoverished, does not sit easily with memories of the terrible destructive forces wrought on Iraq.

Today, prominent voices in Washington suggested that the appointment of the new head of the World Bank should indeed be part of the "War on Terror". At the same time, so counter-intuitive is President George Bush’s nomination of Mr Wolfowitz, fair-minded analysts have called it the "mother of all wind-ups". However, Mr Bush, fresh from the nomination of John Bolton, the fiery State Department hawk, as the US Ambassador to the United Nations, is deadly serious and on something of a roll.

Aiming to thwart this, Europeans are raising the spectre of Caio Koch Weser, the former World Bank official, German minister and aide to Robert McNamara (who himself moved from the Pentagon to the World Bank) – who five years ago was blocked by the US from heading the IMF. Sauce for the goose will do for the gander, say Mr Wolfowitz’s opponents. Even the American-friendly press department at No10 was moved yesterday to point out that Mr Wolfowitz’s nomination was just that, a nomination, and that there may be others on the way.

But should Mr Wolfowitz's billing as the neocons’ necon preclude him from taking the job?

It is plain that the world is failing Africa. An audit last year of the UN Millennium Development Goals Project, an ambitions plan launched in 2000 that called for the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, uncovered a disturbing lack of progress. Not one part of the scheme was judged to be "on track" in sub-Saharan Africa. In some areas the situation had worsened. The number of Africans suffering from tuberculosis, for example, had actually increased since the scheme's launch.

Prof Sachs recently heaped praise on Gordon Brown’s proposal for a "New Marshall Plan" for Africa. The analogy with the US aid programme directed at Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War was, he said, spot on.

"There are several reasons why it is right to invoke the original Marshall Plan," Prof Sachs told Times Online. "First, it was intensive, second it was successful, third it may remind the United States of a time when it showed a greater interest in its global role."

On two of these scores, Mr Bush’s nomination has shown himself to be adept. Like it or not, in sending its troops to Iraq, the US executive, following a plan of action advocated primarily by Mr Wolfowitz, has shown that it is prepared to assume a global role in an intensive fashion. Mr Wolfowitz, meanwhile, has shown himself adept at currying favour in the White House - a quality that could prove extremely useful in tackling development projects.

But America’s execution of its Iraq policy is open to criticism. A report by Gareth Evans, the former Australian foreign minister, recently highlighted how "bad or corrupt" business practices have contributed to poverty and human rights abuse. The various debacles in Iraq involving Halliburton and US Army contracts and the spectacle of Abu Ghraib have raised a question mark over the abilities of those who run the US Defense Department. There is simply no room for such doubts, many will argue, at an international institution as important as the World Bank. In many ways, they say, the organisation does not need the baggage borne by Mr Wolfowitz.

Finally, there remains from Prof Sach’s development triptych the prickly question of success. For some, the Wolfowitz-designed war will forever represent an indefensible and illogical act of aggression that rode roughshod over international law. Others see the episode as a profound military blunder. And then there are others for whom the possibility of a "cedar revolution" in Lebanon justifies the strategy of pre-emptive action that toppled an evil dictator in a nearby state.

Such debate could rage for decades. Above all, Mr Wolfowitz needs to be aware that Africa cannot wait.

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