An introductory look at the World Bank’s Global Partnership for Enhanced Social Accountability, currently under construction and inviting comments on how it can help civil society organizations hold their governments to account for more effective development.
What is the Global Partnership for Enhanced Social Accountability?
In April 2011, World Bank President Robert Zoellick addressed the Peterson Institute for International Economics about the implications of the political revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa on how we should think about development. He focused specifically on the importance of citizen action and civil society: “An empowered public is the foundation for a stronger society, more effective government, and a more successful state,” he said. The World Bank is currently developing a proposed Global Partnership for Enhanced Social Accountability to support civil society organizations (CSOs) in developing countries to hold governments accountable and improve development outcomes.
At ONE, you will often hear the jargon “siloed,” “cross-cutting” and “lens” when referring to our issues affecting global poverty. In reality, all the issues are cross-cutting and work hand-in-hand toward worldwide development. One lens that is important to ONE and gaining the attention of the international community is gender and its role in development objectives. So, let’s put on our gender glasses and take a look at what is happening around this topic.
Last week, I had the huge honor of hearing Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, speak at the Society for International Development (SID) World Conference. Mr. Zoellick’s speech, which kicked off a weekend of workshops and panel discussions with the NGO community, spoke directly to SID’s mission to reappraise and challenge the fundamentals behind development policy. ONE fellow and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson moderated the conversation, and touched on issues such as poverty, food security and long-term development.
The G20 finance ministers and central bank governors met last week in Washington, D.C., alongside the World Bank and IMF Spring Meetings, and released a communiqué detailing the outcomes. The G20 reiterated that their main objective is to “improve the living standards of all our citizens through strong economic and jobs growth.” Maintaining a focus on reducing global financial imbalances from the 2010 Seoul Summit, the ministers and governors also agreed to a set of guidelines and indicators that would standardize how countries are managing balance sheets.
The poorest countries on earth have more needs and deficiencies than many of us can comprehend, from fallow fields to failing schools to raging epidemics. One cannot help but ask: Where should donor countries even begin to help out?
Last week, the World Bank launched a strategy to replace the 2005 Africa Action Plan (AAP) as a blueprint for its engagement with African countries over the next ten years. The strategy, called “Africa’s Future and the World Banks Support For It,” rests on three pillars: competitiveness and employment; vulnerability and resilience (specifically to economic and health-related shocks, natural disasters and conflict); and governance and public sector capacity.
In my mind, the following goals are the most important highlights of the new strategy:
Prioritizing impact: The strategy unveils the Bank’s ten-year “vision” for Africa, which includes ambitious targets for the region like middle-income status for five new countries, a doubling of the continent’s share of global trade and per capita income increases of 20% in 20 countries. Along with a new strategic monitoring framework, through which the Bank will track Africa’s progress and evaluate its own role in meeting the targets, this focus on impact – instead of inputs or outputs – is a welcome step toward ensuring that investments are delivering results.
Applying lessons learned: The strategy calls for the Bank to innovate and learn from the AAP’s shortcomings – a promise that it has already started to make good on. To help prevent the strategy from becoming a “top-down exercise” like the AAP, the Bank vetted it through an aggressive consultation process that included meetings in 30 countries and an online forum to gather feedback from the public. Taking stock of lessons learned is a trend across donor agencies right now (take a look at USAID FORWARD and the recent aid reviews by the UK government, for example). Hopefully the Bank’s engagement on this agenda is a sign that the multilateral agencies are getting on board as well.
Leveraging partnerships: The Bank identifies partnerships as the most critical instrument for implementing its new strategy – at the global level with the African Diaspora, the private sector and emerging economies, and at the country-level by playing to its comparative advantage and coordinating with partners to fill gaps. In the health sector, for example, the Bank says it will stay focused on building and sustaining systems, while looking to others to finance antiretroviral therapy and other vertical programs. Though this “division of labor” may cause alarm in some quarters (and indeed, we need details on where the Bank intends to “step back” to ensure others step in), it shows that the Bank is committed to leveraging its unique ability to convene partners and provide the “glue” in-country that enables vertical programs to succeed.
Supporting governance and growth: Although the Bank will maintain its support for priority sectors like health and agriculture, the new strategy explicitly shifts from a stove-piped, sectoral approach to prioritize two broader engines of development –governance and economic growth. Some intriguing new initiatives in these areas include a “Growth Poles Project” to invest in industries and locations with the highest economic potential; a renewed emphasis on infrastructure; a commitment to promote social accountability through technology and public expenditure tracking projects; and a Civil Society Fund to support citizen groups focused on improving governance and transparency.
All in all, some pretty praiseworthy goals. Yet a lot of questions remain on the implementation side, especially exactly how the Bank plans to engage African governments, the private sector and emerging donors as partners (especially to help meet resource gaps) and how the new approach will be rolled out in individual countries. More than ever before, Africa is proving itself to be continent of 48 very different countries, some making great economic and political strides and others locked in cycles of conflict and poverty. Defining the Bank’s strategy in individual countries – what it will prioritize, where it will be pulling back, and how it intends to mobilize new partners – is no doubt a big question for African governments and citizens right now. So let’s hope that the implementation process is as inclusive as the strategy-setting one.
As you may have read in our news roundup yesterday morning, the World Bank’s International Development Agency (known as IDA) received an historic boost in funding yesterday. Officials meeting in Brussels agreed to contribute $49.3 billion for IDA over the next three years, representing an 18 percent increase over IDA’s last financing round. Although the specific donor contributions have not yet been publicized, we do know that year’s replenishment included unprecedented increases in resources mobilized from within the World Bank and from former IDA borrowers.
This is great news for the world’s poorest countries, where (as my colleague Lauren noted earlier this week) IDA is one of the biggest donors. The World Bank estimates that this increased funding for IDA will help immunize 200 million more children, extend health services to over 30 million people, give access to improved water sources to 80 million more people, help build 80,000 kilometers of roads and train and recruit over two million teachers. For African countries (which make up 39 of 70 IDA countries) this could be a huge help towards meeting the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
ONE is campaigning to ensure that the Congressional budget does not cut foreign assistance programs like Feed the Future that help people break the cycle of poverty and hunger.
The Horn of Africa is experiencing its worst drought in 60 years. More than 11 million people, mostly nomadic pastoralists and farmers in south-central Somalia, north-eastern Kenya, and south-eastern Ethiopia, are severely lacking access to food.
2011 marks 30 years since the first cases of AIDS were documented. Take a closer look at the specific, achievable goals we must hit by 2015 to make this year the beginning of the end of AIDS.
As aid agencies warn more than 9 million people could be affected by a food crisis in East Africa, world leaders are failing to keep their 2009 promises to tackle the causes of chronic hunger and support farmers in the world's poorest countries.
