Editor,

The Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) of the World Bank released this week a new evaluation of the World Bank’s Country-level Engagement on Governance and Anticorruption.

Evidence indicates that well-governed countries can have a more successful path to development. The World Bank’s 2007 governance and anti-corruption (GAC) strategy reaffirmed its continuing commitment to the crucial agenda of helping countries to develop accountable and effective states.

Recognising the diverse patterns of governance across regions, the report states that to be viable, GAC efforts in the Sub-Saharan Africa region needed to take into account political economy factors.

These including the previous structural adjustment and subsequent capacity-building efforts had proved unsustainable.

Besides, "democratic transition in some countries still offers a chance to reshape state-society relations, even as conflict threatens further decline in others”.

However, "the evaluation was unable to assess the cost-effectiveness of GPF grants” and the document also notes that "Reporting on GAC results suffered due to lack of information on activities financed through incremental Bank Budget (BB)”.

Regarding efforts pursued in the Sub-Saharan Africa region, the "information was piecemeal and not sufficiently up-to-date to determine what was funded and delivered through the use of the incremental BB resources”.

Agustin Castro,
Consultant