If we could reinvent MDBs to respond to urgent development and climate needs and to benefit from 70 years of experience with the model, what would they look like? Countries should chart their own low-carbon climate resilient development and growth paths, with robust analytical support from MDBs that...

The climate financial intermediary funds (FIFs) are one of the largest sources of grant and concessional finance for climate, especially for middle-income countries, but there are significant challenges at the systemic level and differing performance across FIFs. We recommend consolidating funds in ...

The World Bank is in the most visible position as it works on its evolution roadmap. But change is needed across the MDB system to enable these institutions to play a more effective and a much bigger role in helping the world meet these challenges. Together they hold about $500 billion in shareholde...

The assignment is clear. During this year’s Annual Meetings of the IMF and World Bank, shareholders instructed the World Bank to develop a work program for its own evolution (“to identify gaps in the Bank’s current institutional and operational framework…”) by the end of the year. Secretary Yellen l...

The stakes are high for the African Development Fund (AfDF) as it kicks off its replenishment fundraising exercise this spring. Countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are still grappling with the health and economic fallout of the COVID-19 crisis, with over 30 million of their citizens pushed into po...

As the global financial community considers how to extend debt relief accompanied by IMF adjustment programs to vulnerable low-income countries, the issue of policy conditions for fiscal adjustment will inevitably arise. This paper considers the effectiveness of conditions related to domestic revenu...

Many stress the critical role of the private sector in filling yawning sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) infrastructure finance gaps, only widened by the pandemic. Our paper looks in detail at financially closed (construction-ready) transactions with private participation in SSA from 2007-2020. Despite the “...