(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022) Independent Evaluation Group
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.