This report is a self-evaluation of the Operations Evaluation Department's (OED) Country Assistance Evaluations (CAEs). CAEs examine World Bank performance in a particular country, usually over the past four to five years, and report on its conformity with the relevant Bank Country Assistance Strategy (CAS) and on the overall effectiveness of the specific CAS. This Retrospective addresses the question "What Have We Learned?" by compiling lessons relevant for developing country assistance strategies from the most recent batch of CAEs. Second, it assesses revisions to the CAE process.
Evaluation is a key tool in improving the quality and effectiveness of development co-operation. The Development Assistance Committee (DAC) Working Party in Aid Evaluation is the only international forum where bilateral and multilateral evaluation ...
African countries need to improve the performance of their public sectors if they are going to achieve their goals of growth, poverty reduction, and the provision of better services for their citizens. Between 1995 and 2004, the Bank provided some $9 billion in lending and close to $900 million in grants and administrative budget to support public sector capacity building in Africa. This evaluation assesses Bank support for public sector capacity building in Africa over these past 10 years. It is based on six country studies, assessments of country strategies and operations across the Region, and review of the work of the World Bank Institute, the Institutional Development Fund, and the Bank-supported African Capacity Building Foundation.
During its 40-year history, the International Development Association (IDA) has worked to improve global welfare by allocating resources to growth and poverty reduction programs. In 1990, a new framework for IDA's poverty reduction efforts was created which resulted in significant structural change to its programs. The focus of the programs became one of labor-intensive growth and expanded access to social services and safety nets to improve incomes levels among the poor. Additionally, the IDA agenda was expanded to include gender, the environment and governance as facets of the poverty reduction framework. This report evaluates IDA's performance from 1994 through 2000 against the three specific replenishment commitments of the period. While finding the performance level only partially satisfactory, the review suggests ways to improve the effectiveness of IDA programs, replenishment process and its ability to match corporate and country priorities.
The World Bank's support in fostering growth and reducing poverty has contributed to the considerable economic success of MIC countries. But to produce greater development benefits, it has to become more agile and draw upon MICs' own capacity much more systematically, connecting such capabilities to help low-income countries and to tackle global challenges. The Bank's work has to more clearly demonstrate best practice to deliver impact beyond its limited direct role.
This IEG evaluation, requested by the World Bank s Board of Executive Directors, represents the first independent evaluation of the PSIA experience. The evaluation finds that: The PSIA approach has appropriately emphasized the importance of assessing the distributional impact of policy actions, understanding institutional and political constraints to development, and building domestic ownership for reforms PSIAs have not always explicitly stated their operational objectives (i.e., informing country policies, informing Bank operations, and/or contributing to country capacity) PSIAs have had limited ownership by Bank staff and managers and have often not been effectively integrated into country assistance programs Quality assurance and Monitoring and Evaluation of the overall effectiveness of PSIAs have been weak The evaluation recommends that the World Bank: Ensure that Bank staff understand what the PSIA approach is and when to use it Clarify the operational objectives of each PSIA and tailor the approach and timeline to those objectives Improve integration of the PSIA into the Bank s country assistance program by requiring that all earmarked funding for PSIAs be matched by a substantial contribution from the country unit budgets Strengthen PSIA effectiveness through enhanced quality assurance
Every year, the World Bank’s World Development Report (WDR) features a topic of central importance to global development. The 2018 WDR—LEARNING to Realize Education’s Promise—is the first ever devoted entirely to education. And the time is right: education has long been critical to human welfare, but it is even more so in a time of rapid economic and social change. The best way to equip children and youth for the future is to make their learning the center of all efforts to promote education. The 2018 WDR explores four main themes: First, education’s promise: education is a powerful instrument for eradicating poverty and promoting shared prosperity, but fulfilling its potential requires better policies—both within and outside the education system. Second, the need to shine a light on learning: despite gains in access to education, recent learning assessments reveal that many young people around the world, especially those who are poor or marginalized, are leaving school unequipped with even the foundational skills they need for life. At the same time, internationally comparable learning assessments show that skills in many middle-income countries lag far behind what those countries aspire to. And too often these shortcomings are hidden—so as a first step to tackling this learning crisis, it is essential to shine a light on it by assessing student learning better. Third, how to make schools work for all learners: research on areas such as brain science, pedagogical innovations, and school management has identified interventions that promote learning by ensuring that learners are prepared, teachers are both skilled and motivated, and other inputs support the teacher-learner relationship. Fourth, how to make systems work for learning: achieving learning throughout an education system requires more than just scaling up effective interventions. Countries must also overcome technical and political barriers by deploying salient metrics for mobilizing actors and tracking progress, building coalitions for learning, and taking an adaptive approach to reform.
Sub-Saharan Africa is a critical development priority-it has some of the world's poorest countries and during the past two decades the number of poor in the Region has doubled, to 300 million-more than 40 percent of the Region's population. Africa remains behind on most of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and is unlikely to reach them by 2015. With some of the world's poorest countries, Africa is a development priority for the donor community. A major drag on Africa's development is the underperformance of the critical agriculture sector, which has been neglected both by donors and governments over the past two decades. The sector faces a variety of constraints that are particular to agriculture in Africa and make its development a complex challenge. Poor governance and conflict in several countries further complicate matters. IEG has assessed the development effectiveness of World Bank assistance in addressing constraints to agricultural development in Africa over the period of fiscal 1991-2006.
"This report is a synthesis of three evaluations carried out by the Independent Evaluation Group and completed between July 2005 and February 2006, on different aspects of Bank assistance to financial sector development in client countries. The three evaluation reports are World Bank Lending for Lines of Credit: An IEG Evaluation; IEG Review of World Bank Assistance for Financial Sector Reform; and Financial Sector Assessment Program: IEG Review of the Joint World Bank and IMF Initiative. This paper seeks to draw out common themes and issues that have arisen from the three evaluations, which reviewed major components of the Bank's assistance during more than a decade to the financial sectors of client countries."
