The World Bank wants to convince state-sponsored sovereign wealth funds to invest one percent of their estimated three trillion dollars in assets in Africa, its president said yesterday, reports AFP .

“If the World Bank Group can create the equity investment platforms and benchmarks to attract these investors, the allocation of even one percent of their assets would draw 30 billion dolars to African growth, development, and opportunity,” Zoellick said in remarks prepared for delivery at a Washington think tank.

Dubbed the “One Percent Solution” for equity investment in Africa, the system being devised would allow the poor countries to finance their energy and infrastructure needs while strengthening their private sector and their access to global markets, he told the Center for Global Development.

“A lesson of the recycling of petrodollars in the 1970s is that equity investments are more sustainable than debt,” Zoellick said.

The plan also could burnish the image of some sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), swollen by Asian exports and Gulf oil exports, whose investments have raised concerns that they may be politic, rather than commercial, tools.

“Yes, the sovereign funds need transparency and should be guided by best practices to avoid politicization,” Zoellick acknowledged, as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and other institutions work on developing best practices guidelines for them.

“But I believe we should celebrate a possibility that government- sponsored funds will invest equity in development,” he said, speaking before the annual IMF-World Bank spring meetings on April 12-13 in Washington.

In addition, the initiative would allow certain emerging countries to join the 185-nation development lender’s aid program, through the support of their SWFs.

That would be particularly the case with China, whose massive bilateral aid to several African countries is considered to be politically motivated.

The World Bank would be a “preferred partner” in the initiative, offering its expertise through two of its branches: the International Finance Corporation and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency.

Zoellick proposed three other measures on Wednesday to ease the distress caused by a slowing world economy on the most vulnerable countries: a “New Deal” global anti-hunger policy to fight soaring food prices, strengthening the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, launched in 2002 to improve governance in resource-rich countries; and conclusion of the World Trade Organization’s Doha Round of negotiations.

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