Institutional and Governance Review
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Publication
CPIA Africa, September 2023: Policies for Economic Resilience in a Turbulent World
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-09-12)The Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) for Africa is an annual diagnostic tool for Sub-Saharan African countries that are eligible for financing from the International Development Association (IDA), the part of the World Bank that helps the world’s poorest countries. The CPIA Africa 2023 report provides an assessment of the quality of policies and institutions in all 39 IDA-eligible countries in Sub-Saharan Africa for calendar year 2022. The average overall CPIA score for Sub-Saharan Africa remained unchanged at 3.1 in 2022. Economic and social resilience continues to be tested in all countries in Sub-Saharan Africa amid tight global credit markets, as institutional capacity for restoring stability and delivering sustained growth remains a challenge. Such resilience is also fundamental to responding to global climate change and the expected market shifts as the world economy transitions to green energy. The recovery of economic activity in the region following the slowdown caused by COVID-19 has been multispeed, with wide variation across countries. Global events that diverted attention away from longer-term development priorities marked 2022. Inflation was the predominant form in which international pressures translated to domestic economies in Sub-Saharan Africa, resulting in stress on social policies and government budgets, on account of divergent responses by governments and private sector competition. In some countries, this has led to significant stress on debt sustainability, highlighting the importance of debt management, budgetary oversight, and financial soundness. An opportunity for regrouping on policy reforms arose in the second half of 2022, as gas prices declined after a mild European winter and China lifted health-related restrictions. Despite global economic challenges, more countries in Sub-Saharan Africa saw improvements in their overall CPIA scores compared to the previous year. In Western and Central Africa (AFW), the overall score increased for eight countries—Benin, Cabo Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, the Republic of Congo, and Togo. The overall score increased for four countries in Eastern and Southern Africa (AFE)—Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, and Zambia. In contrast, the overall score decreased for eight countries—Chad, the Comoros, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Sudan. The countries with improved scores made notable advancements in the economic management, policies for social inclusion, and governance clusters. Conversely, the countries with declining scores faced economic management and governance challenges. For the most part, the countries that received downgrades were positioned toward the lower end of the scale, while the upgraded countries generally had overall scores above 3, indicating a growing divergence in scores across the region in 2022. -
Publication
CPIA Africa, November 2021: Assessing Africa’s Policies and Institutions
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-11)The Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) 2021 Africa report provides an assessment of the quality of policies and institutions of International Development Association (IDA); eligible countries in Sub-Saharan Africa in calendar year 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The report analyzes the CPIA scores for 2020 to assess the extent to which the policies and institutions of the region's IDA countries are fostering sustainable growth, poverty reduction, and the effective utilization of development resources. The CPIA scores quantify the level of performance of each country against 16 criteria that represent the policy and institutional arrangements of an effective poverty reduction and growth strategy. The criteria are grouped into four clusters: economic management, structural policies, policies for social inclusion and equity, and public sector management and institutions. Countries are rated on a scale between 1 and 6, with high and rising scores signifying stronger policy and institutional frameworks. -
Publication
CPIA Africa, August 2020: Safeguarding Human Capital during and beyond COVID-19
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-08-12)The 2020 Africa Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) report covers the period from January to December 2019. The addition of Somalia brought the number of the region’s International Development Association (IDA)–eligible countries to 39. The overall CPIA score for the region’s 39 IDA-eligible countries came in at 3.1, the same as in the previous three years, in a context of moderating per capita growth. The average scores for most of the CPIA clusters trended down in 2019. While the average score for the economic management cluster was unchanged from last year’s assessment, the average scores for the other three clusters—structural policies, social inclusion, and public management and institutions—declined, indicating that the quality of policies and institutions in the region’s IDA countries weakened in 2019. The weakening of structural policies was reflected in the decline in the quality of trade policy, uneven improvements in the regulations affecting factor and product markets, and further deterioration of the financial sector performance. In the area of social inclusion, many countries experienced a decrease in the quality of service delivery that affects access to and quality of health and education services. In the broader area of governance, limited progress was made in strengthening property rights, and transparency and accountability. In addition, the quality of public administration declined, and financial management systems and revenue mobilization capacity weakened in many countries. -
Publication
CPIA Africa, June 2015: Assessing Africa's Policies and Institutions
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-06)The Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) Africa report describes the progress African countries are making on strengthening the quality of their policies and institutions. Some of the results from this report include: The overall quality of policies and institutions in countries in Sub-Saharan Africa was unchanged in 2014, but there was much variation in performance across countries. More than half the countries in the region saw a change in their policy environment: 10 countries experienced an improvement in their overall CPIA score, and an equal number saw a deterioration. There were divergent trends across policy clusters. Economic management weekend on the back of continuing fiscal policy slippage, as the sharp drop in commodity prices underscored weaknesses in the fiscal framework of several of the regions countries. By contrast, there was some strengthening in the governance cluster, with nine countries showing improvements in scores, more than twice the number of countries with declines. The greatest progress in this cluster was in the quality of budgetary and financial management. -
Publication
CPIA Africa, June 2014: Assessing Africa's Policies and Institutions
(Washington, DC, 2014-06)This report describes the progress African countries are making on strengthening the quality of policies and institutions that underpin development. It presents Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) scores for the 39 African countries that are eligible for support from the International Development Association (IDA). This year's report expands coverage to include Djibouti and Yemen from the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA). The scores, which are on a scale of 1 to 6 with 6 being the highest, are an indicator of the quality of these countries' policy and institutional framework across 16 dimensions grouped into four clusters: economic management (Cluster A), structural policies (Cluster B), policies for social inclusion and equity (Cluster C), and public sector management and institutions (Cluster D). The overall quality of policies and institutions in Sub-Saharan African countries held steady in 2013, with divergent performance across countries. The average CPIA score for Sub-Saharan Africa held steady at 3.2 in 2013. But beyond the flat regional average, there was considerable divergence in country performance. For the region's IDA borrowers, scores were in a range of 3.9 to 2.0. A broad-based deepening of policy reforms lifted Rwanda's CPIA score in 2013, and the country joined Cabo Verde and Kenya at the top of the score range. Other top performers include Burkina Faso, Senegal, and Tanzania (all with scores of 3.8). South Sudan and Eritrea remained at the low-end of the score range (2.1 and 2,0, respectively), weighed down by deep policy and governance challenges. The quality of policies and institutions in MENA countries lags behind the average for middle income countries in all CPIA categories with scores lower relative to the Sub-Saharan African IDA country average. Since 2005, neither Yemen nor Djibouti has improved its overall rating; indeed, Yemen's overall policy and institutional score actually declined. The average CPIA score for countries in MENA was 3.0 in 2013, unchanged from 2012. Both Djibouti and Yemen had unchanged scores, indicating that despite unsettled conditions in the region and lingering challenges in global economic conditions, these countries generally opted to maintain their existing policy framework. Djibouti's CPIA score (3.1) was slightly higher than the average while Yemen's was on par with the average. -
Publication
CPIA Africa, June 2013: Assessing Africa's Policies and Institutions
(Washington, DC, 2013-06)This report is the second in a series of annual reports describing the progress African countries are making on strengthening the quality of policies and institutions that underpin development. It presents Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) scores for the 39 African countries that are eligible for support from the International Development Association (IDA). The development literature identifies the components of the CPIA as being broadly relevant for sustaining growth and reducing poverty. The data provide some support for this association. All country groups exhibit similar patterns across the four CPIA clusters. The gap in scores between the macroeconomic management cluster and the governance cluster is just as pronounced for fragile as for non-fragile states. In contrast, the gap between the economic management cluster and the social policies and structural policies clusters is small. Overall, the macroeconomic policy stance in Sub-Saharan Africa was supportive of growth, with monetary policy focused on managing inflation and fiscal policy focused on pro-poor spending and infrastructure development. Inflation declined in 2012, thanks to a moderation in food and fuel prices and prudent monetary policy. However, an expansive fiscal policy translated into a weakening of fiscal balances. Debt levels also edged up, although they remained moderate. As the policy areas in this cluster are closely related, there tends to be co-movement in the scores for monetary and fiscal policy. -
Publication
CPIA Africa, June 2012: Assessing Africa's Policies and Institutions
(Washington, DC, 2012-06)The World Bank's Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) is an important knowledge product that assesses the performance of 39 IDA countries along 16 dimensions of policy and institutional quality. This is the first in the series of annual reports. The 16 dimensions are grouped into four clusters: economic management; structural policies; policies for social inclusion and equity; and public sector management and institutions. The CPIA has been measuring and tracking the strength of policies and institutions in IDA-eligible countries since 1980, and releasing that information since 2006. Until now, the CPIA has been used mainly to inform IDA's allocation of resources to poor countries and in research. Yet the information contained in the CPIA is potentially valuable to governments, the private sector, civil society, researchers and the media as a tool to monitor their country's progress and benchmark it against progress in other countries. By presenting the CPIA scores for 38 African countries over six years in one easy-to-read document, this report aims to provide citizens with information that can support evidence-based debate that can, in turn, lead to better development outcomes. The scope of the report is motivated by the World Bank's open data initiative and the new Africa strategy, both of which seek to foster participation in development from a wide range of stakeholders by providing broader access to data and knowledge. -
Publication
Better Regulation for Growth: Governance Frameworks and Tools for Effective Regulatory Reform
(Washington, DC, 2010)Regulatory reform has emerged as an important policy area in developing countries. For reforms to be beneficial, regulatory regimes need to be transparent, coherent, and comprehensive. They must establish appropriate institutional frameworks and liberalized business regulations; enforce competition policy and law; and open external and internal markets to trade and investment. This report examines the institutional set-up for and use of regulatory policy instruments in Zambia. It is one of five reports prepared on countries in East and Southern Africa (the others are on Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Tanzania). The report is based on a review of public documents prepared by the government, donors, and the private sector, and on a limited number of interviews with key institutions and individuals.