World Bank President Jim Yong Kim has announced he will step down in February, more than three years ahead of his term expiring.

Dr Kim, the bank's 12th president, said on Monday that he will join a firm focusing on increasing infrastructure in developing countries, but the global lender provided no further details.

The World Bank's chief executive officer Kristalina Georgieva, will assume the role of interim president.

Before taking up the World Bank leadership in 2012, Dr Kim served as President of Dartmouth College in the US and held professorships at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health.

The former physician and anthropologist was also director of the World Health Organisation's HIV/AIDS department from 2003 to 2005, and was named as one of Time Magazine's "100 most influential people" in the world.


At the WHO he led the "3 by 5" initiative, the first-ever global campaign for AIDS treatment, which pushed to expand access to anti-retroviral medication in developing countries.

Image: Donald Trump's administration has majority voting rights in nominating a successor

In 1987, Dr Kim co-founded Partners In Health, a non-profit medical organisation that now works in poor communities on four continents.

In a statement Dr Kim said: "The work of the World Bank Group is more important now than ever as the aspirations of the poor rise all over the world, and problems like climate change, pandemics, famine and refugees continue to grow in both their scale and complexity.

"Serving as president and helping position the institution squarely in the middle of all these challenges has

been a great privilege."

Dr Kim was nominated to the post for two terms by former US president Barack Obama, and advocated financing for green energy projects while dropping support for coal power investments.

The Trump administration, with its largely sceptical stance on climate change, will have great influence in deciding Dr Kim's successor, as the US holds a controlling stake in the World Bank's voting rights.