World Bank Archives

A common thread for scaling development finance: transparency

By Sally Paxton and Guest | Nov 13, 2024 | Blog

Following the World Bank Annual Meetings, and amidst negotiations for the replenishment of the International Development Association, Sally Paxton and Nancy Lee sift through some of the issues holding back the scaling of public and private resources. They find a common thread – transparency – and argue that multilateral development banks should be using the power of their own data to help fill the information gaps that stand in the way of progress.

Transforming our understanding of what works to mobilise private investors

By Sally Paxton and Gary Forster | Oct 16, 2024 | Blog

Ahead of next week’s World Bank Annual Meetings, Sally Paxton discusses the critical role of development banks in mobilising private capital to meet global development goals, and why we still don’t understand what is working. She presents new recommendations from Publish What You Fund to fill the current knowledge gap by improving the measurement and disclosure of private capital mobilisation, and stresses why action is urgently needed.

How and why does the Global Food and Nutrition Security Dashboard use aid data?

By Sam Cavenett | Jul 23, 2024 | Case studies

Zacharey Carmichael, Senior Economist in the World Bank’s Agriculture and Food Global Practice discusses how the Global Food and Nutrition Security Dashboard uses International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) data to support real-time emergency decision-making.

Is IDA’s Private Sector Window mobilizing the private sector?

By Sally Paxton | May 8, 2024 | Blog

Since the establishment of the International Development Association’s (IDA’s) Private Sector Window (PSW), there have been concerns about its structure, use of blended finance, and the inability to measure its progress and impact. With the start of IDA21 replenishment discussions, it is an appropriate time to analyze the PSW – especially to understand whether and how it is mobilizing the private sector. Finally, in the context of broader MDB reform efforts, how do we scale up private capital mobilization to close the significant financial gaps needed to meet the Sustainable Development Goals?

What’s missing from the World Bank’s Draft Gender Strategy? Transparency

By Alex Farley and Sally Paxton | Feb 13, 2024 | Blog

As the World Bank prepares to finalise its new gender strategy, we ask how you can identify World Bank projects targeting gender equality, their location, sector, amount of funding and most importantly their impact. In short, you can’t. We set out why this matters for accountability and how the Bank should address the transparency gaps in its gender strategy and implementation plan.

The three changes we need to improve understanding of private capital mobilisation

By Paul James | Nov 8, 2023 | Blog

the recent report of the G20 Independent Expert Group (IEG) offers a blueprint for how multilateral development banks (MDBs) can be scaled effectively to increase lending to emerging and developing economies. Paul James looks into the mobilisation of private finance targets in the IEG report, and outlines three changes that are needed if we are to better understand mobilisation and ultimately drive changes that will result in its growth.