01. Annual Reports & Independent Evaluations
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Publication
An Evaluation of World Bank and International Finance Corporation Engagement for Gender Equality over the Past 10 Years: Approach Paper
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-11-14)This Approach Paper proposes an independent evaluation of the results achieved by the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in supporting countries (understood as governments, private sector, civil society, and citizens at large) to address gender inequalities and the contribution of the gender strategy for fiscal years (FY)16–23. -
Publication
Learning and Adapting for Outcomes through the Management Action Record 2023: A World Bank Group Management Report on Implementation of IEG Recommendations
(Washington, DC, 2023-10-30)The Management Action Record (MAR) provides Management’s annual self-assessment of World Bank Group (WBG)-wide progress in implementing recommendations from the Independent Evaluation Group's (IEG) major evaluations to deliver outcomes in key priority areas. The MAR is an important vehicle for monitoring the uptake of IEG evaluations; it aims to ensure that recommendations lead to targeted actions that help shape the WBG’s strategic directions, improve its development effectiveness, and ultimately help countries achieve their development goals. This year’s MAR report provides updates on 59 recommendations from 22 IEG evaluations issued between FY19 and FY22, covering a diverse range of areas of strategic importance to the WBG. Building on progress achieved over the previous reporting cycles since the 2020 MAR Reform, this year’s MAR process featured enhanced candor in the self-assessment, a broader evidence base, and a widening of the teams involved in providing feedback to IEG for richer reporting. During this year’s MAR update cycle, Management continued its more intensive engagement approach, with more touchpoints, to enhance the MAR’s learning focus and build understanding between evaluators and technical staff. This has included the facilitation of dozens of evaluation-specific working meetings with IEG, involving over 130 participants from across the WBG, with representation from all relevant WB Global Practices, IFC, and MIGA regional and industry teams. -
Publication
Independent Evaluation Group Validation of the Management Action Record 2023
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-10-30)The report provides the Independent Evaluation Group’s (IEGs) validation of World Bank Group management’s report Learning and Adapting for Outcomes through the Management Action Record 2023: A World Bank Group Management Report on Implementation of IEG Recommendations for the period July 2022 to June 2023. The purpose of the Management Action Record (MAR) assessment system is to support accountability, learning, and adaptation for the Bank Group’s implementation of recommendations from IEG evaluations. This validation document presents IEG’s assessment of progress toward achieving the intended outcomes of evaluations and the evidence in management’s MAR report. The Bank Group made steady progress in implementing IEG recommendations through delivering internal products and adapting processes; in some cases, it has achieved meaningful change of direction that shows that the outcomes of recommendations are being achieved. The validation assessed the evidence for all 22 IEG evaluations included in the MAR, that is, all evaluations reviewed by the Board Committee on Development Effectiveness (CODE) between FY19 and FY22. These 22 evaluations contain 59 recommendations. -
Publication
Financial Inclusion: Lessons from World Bank Group Experience, Fiscal Years 2014–22
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-08-28)This evaluation explores how and with what effect the World Bank Group has supported financial inclusion for the microenterprises, poor households, women, and other excluded groups. Financial inclusion is defined as the use of financial services by individuals and firms. It encompasses financial access—owning an account—and the use of financial services. There has been an impressive growth in account ownership globally, from 55% of adults in 2014 to 71% in 2021, although usage is more limited as some accounts are inactive. Critically, both financial access and the use of financial services remain major challenges for microenterprises, poor households, women, and other excluded groups. The objective of the evaluation is to assess whether the Bank Group has been doing the right things and whether it has been doing things right on financial inclusion. The evaluation captures lessons from the World Bank’s experience supporting financial inclusion for microenterprises, poor households, women, and other excluded groups and updates a 2015 financial inclusion evaluation. The evaluation includes a retrospective look at the drive for universal financial access and examines progress and challenges in women’s access to financial services. The evaluation also assesses the Bank Group’s support for digital financial services as vehicles for financial inclusion. Finally, the report examines the World Bank’s response to COVID-19 as it relates to financial inclusion. The evaluation proposes three recommendations: (i) The World Bank and IFC should further encourage account use by underserved groups, including women and rural poor people, and emphasize this more in their strategies and projects. (ii) The World Bank and IFC should design and implement more comprehensive approaches that address constraints in the enabling environment for DFS to reach underserved and excluded groups. (iii) To enhance learning on what works to increase the beneficial use of financial services at the MPWEG, the World Bank and IFC should collect outcome data across different underserved and excluded groups, initially on a pilot basis. -
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Addressing Gender Inequalities in Countries Affected by Fragility, Conflict, and Violence: An Evaluation of the World Bank Group’s Support
(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-08-10)Conflict and fragility increase the exposure of women and girls to gender-based violence (GBV) and make it more difficult for them to access social services, including sexual and reproductive health services. Fragility, conflict, and violence (FCV) also exacerbate their vulnerability to poverty and increase their unpaid work burden from their caregiving role. The increase of situations of fragility and conflict in recent years has called the World Bank Group to step up its engagement in these contexts and to adapt its approach to address gender inequalities in FCV countries. The Bank Group recognizes in many corporate and strategic documents, such as the 2020-2025 FCV strategy, that for Bank Group support to produce meaningful and lasting results toward greater gender equality in FCV countries, it needs to have five specific elements. These elements include relevance, depth, sustainability, scale, and inclusive ownership. The evaluation uses these elements to assess the Bank Group’s country support for women’s and girls’ economic empowerment (WGEE) and GBV prevention and response. The evaluation analyzes in depth the experiences of six countries (Burkina Faso, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lebanon, the Solomon Islands, and the Republic of Yemen) where the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) provided support to advance WGEE and address GBV during the past 10 years. The report draws on a combination of in-depth desk review of documents, more than 200 interviews of World Bank and IFC staff, government partners, and national and international stakeholders, and field visits, focus group discussions, and face-to-face interviews in. The evaluation analyzes the factors that enable and constrain meaningful and lasting results in addressing gender inequalities in FCV contexts and offers four recommendations to inform future Bank Group support. -
Publication
Approach Paper, Country Program Evaluation - Papua New Guinea: An Evaluation of World Bank Support FY08-22
(World Bank,Washington, DC, 2022-06-28)This Country Program Evaluation (CPE) will assess the World Bank Group’s engagement in Papua New Guinea between FY08 and FY22. The Papua New Guinea has an abundant resource endowment of oil and mineral wealth, but this wealth has not translated into significant welfare gains for most citizens. Papua New Guinea’s fragmented geography and frequent exposure to disasters caused by natural hazards present significant challenges for delivering services to citizens. The evaluation is designed to derive lessons from Bank Group engagement in Papua New Guinea to inform the next Country Partnership Framework (CPF). The CPE will also provide lessons on the implementation of the International Development Association special themes of climate change, gender, and fragility, conflict, and violence and of the cross-cutting issues of debt sustainability and governance and institutions. Lessons may also be of relevance to other resource-rich countries. -
Publication
The World Bank Group in Chad, Fiscal Years 2010–20: Country Program Evaluation
(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2022-06-28)This Country Program Evaluation (CPE) assesses the World Bank Group's development effectiveness in Chad over the past decade within a context of high fragility and extreme poverty. The report covers the implementation of the Interim Strategy Note (2010–12) and the Country Partnership Framework (16–20). This CPE draws lessons to inform the design and implementation of the next partnership strategy with Chad. IEG finds that World Bank Group's support to Chad was aligned with government priorities and World Bank diagnostics. Bank Group support helped advance several human development objectives. It especially increased access to health services, primary and secondary education, and social protection in targeted areas as well as gender equality. Notwithstanding the challenges inherent in working in a fragile and conflict-affected situation, the performance of the Bank Group portfolio in Chad was weak. Timely budget support helped stave off an imminent fiscal crisis but did not achieve sustained reform. Few results were achieved in agriculture, infrastructure, and public resource management. Overall, performance was undermined by procurement delays, high turnover of government counterparts, and a lack of continuity in World Bank staff working on Chad. The following three lessons are offered for consideration. First, timely and targeted analytical work is necessary to inform priority setting, policy dialogue, and the design of reforms. Given the prevalence of capacity and absorptive constraints, it is essential to strategically prioritize analytical work to help identify and understand the most binding constraints to development gains and inform efforts to address them. Second, procurement challenges warrant greater attention to address the underlying political and bureaucratic obstacles, which will require a higher-level dialogue with the government. Lastly, although working in Chad is challenging, it is critical to strengthen incentives to attract and retain talent. This is needed to improve continuity of engagement with country authorities and compensate for weak client capacity, including the high turnover of government officials. -
Publication
The World Bank Group in Bangladesh, Fiscal Years 2011–20: Country Program Evaluation
(Washington, DC : World Bank, 2022)This Country Program Evaluation (CPE) assesses the development effectiveness of the World Bank Group’s engagement with Bangladesh during the past decade (fiscal year [FY]11–20) and provides lessons to inform the next Bank Group supported strategy with Bangladesh and to countries facing similar challenges. The Bank Group made important contributions over the past decade to help Bangladesh address several of its development challenges. Most notable include increasing power generation capacity, improving access to clean energy, all season roads, primary and secondary education, reducing child and maternal mortality and improving financial inclusion. However, achievements fell short in several areas, including insufficient investment in data and measurement particularly on learning outcomes and limited progress on regional connectivity. In other areas, domestic vested interests prevailed resulting in little progress in improving the business environment, natural resource management, banking reform and tariff reform. Bank Group support adapted in response to changing circumstances following the Padma Bridge cancellation by reallocating resources to sectors in which the Bank Group had more traction and a long-standing history of effective engagement. However, rising fiscal vulnerabilities received insufficient attention. Despite a deteriorating trend in institutional quality and economic management and declining core IDA allocation, the Bank Group significantly increased financing to Bangladesh, including through IDA’s Scale Up Facility. Key lessons include: (i) Rebalancing the portfolio in the face of a difficult political economy helped the Bank Group remain relevant in Bangladesh; (ii) Where reform is deemed critical to sustain development progress but government commitment is weak or absent, continued targeted analysis of key development constraints can help prepare the ground for future action when a window of opportunity presents itself; (iii) Measuring improvements in the quality of education requires deliberate and ongoing investment in data collection; (iv) Increasing overall IDA financing in the context of deteriorating CPIA rating raises a question about the significance that IDA assigns to measures of institutional quality and governance; (v) Given underlying concerns with data quality and coverage, the World Bank might have been more qualified in its public statements about the quality of the macroeconomic framework; and (vi) Financial Sector Assessment Program (FSAP) arrangements between the World Bank and the IMF constrain the ability of the World Bank to provide comprehensive and timely assessments of financial sector vulnerabilities in nonsystematically important economies. -
Publication
The World Bank Group in Madagascar, Fiscal Years 2007–21: Country Program Evaluation
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022)This Country Program Evaluation assesses the development effectiveness of the Bank Group’s engagement in Madagascar between fiscal years 2007 and 2021 and surfaces lessons to inform the design and implementation of the next Bank Group–supported partnership strategy with Madagascar. The evaluation reviews the evolution of the Bank Group’s engagement strategy and its implementation over and lessons from experience. It contains a more in depth assessment of Bank Group support in two areas that represent core development challenges: (i) elite capture and (ii) development of rural areas. Bank Group support was increasingly relevant to Madagascar’s core development constraints and contributed to significant progress in several areas. World Bank support contributed to modernizing the country’s tax and customs revenue administrations, improving revenue collection, and generating local revenues, as well as to improved subnational public financial management and decentralized management of natural resources and land certificates. In terms of rural development, Bank Group support contributed to short-term increases in agricultural production and greater food security, the development of value chains, and the government’s increased ability to mitigate the impacts of shocks on Madagascar’s most vulnerable populations to preserve critical human capital. Overall progress was hampered by limited success in designing interventions to avoid misuse by a few high-status individuals. In rural areas, overall progress in increasing small farmers productivity fell short because the adoption of technology to increase agricultural productivity did not adequately target smallholder production systems and did not provide sufficient incentives for farmers in the forest frontier to change their land use practices. -
Publication
IDA18 Retrospective: Investing in Growth, Resilience, and Opportunity through Innovation
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-04-09)The landmark 18th Replenishment of the International Development Association (IDA18) featured significant innovation, substantial delivery, and flexibility to respond to urgent country needs, including COVID-19. Paradigm shifts in IDA18 signaled a significant change for IDA. Dedicated Windows address targeted development needs to complement country allocations.