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.

Why are CSOs important?
Civil society organizations are a valuable resource and an effective tool in delivering assistance in developing countries. Getting CSOs involved in the design, monitoring and evaluation of development projects can help to ensure that objectives are delivered effectively and equitably. Involving organizations that understand a project’s context, including the needs of intended recipients, should produce more transparent and effective programs.

What does the World Bank have to do with social accountability?
The World Bank has projects in virtually every developing country. In 2011, the World Bank provided $46.9 billion for more than 300 projects. The World Bank views the proposed Partnership as a way to leverage its unique reach to strengthen capacity and support for CSOs already working on accountability and transparency in developing countries.

How does the Partnership intend to strengthen CSOs in partner countries?
Building on feedback received through country-level consultations last year, the Partnership aims to strengthen CSOs in three main ways:

What’s next in the development of the partnership?
Currently, the World Bank is holding public consultations. The deadline for first stage comments is March 3. ONE will be making its voice heard by raising a series of important questions, including how the proposed Partnership would be governed and implemented.

If you are at the frontline of development, working for or with CSOs in a developing country, it’s time to make your voices heard, too. The Global Partnership for Enhanced Social Accountability is riding a welcome wave of support for increased transparency and accountability in development. Important questions remain about the design and implementation of a fund to support civil society, but the timing is right for such an initiative. We’re excited to see how the proposal evolves. Keep an eye out for updates here on the ONE Blog.

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.

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend the World Bank’s Open Forum on Gender: “Getting to EQUAL.” The live webcast was hosted by CNN International’s Hala Gorani with a renowned panel of experts including World Bank President Robert Zoellick, Nike Foundation Founder and CEO Maria Eitel and many others. In conjunction, the World Bank just published the 2012 Gender Equality and Development report with the main premise that positioning women in development efforts is simply smart economics. Increases in gender equality will create gains in productivity and therefore, improvements in development outcomes.

The panel lists discussed numerous ways to bridge the gender gap from creating female role models for girls, engaging communities in conceptual gender equality, and to connecting girls to sports and leadership opportunities. It was evident that not one method could be used for solving the same problem in diverse communities, but a means that can be unanimous in all arenas.

Educating every girl can help break the cycle of poverty. Research shows that providing girls with just an extra year of schooling can increase individual wages by up to 20 percent, and consequentially lower birth rates, enabling the next generation to have increased health care and better education for their children.

The Millennium Development education goal is to ensure that by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling. Institutions and organizations like the United Nations Girls Education Initiative, the Global Partnership for Education, the Girl Effect and many others are helping to swing the focus towards girls’ education through monetary investment and awareness building, but there is still much to be accomplished to ensure the education and equality of women.

You can watch the full speech, “A Conversation with Robert Zoellick” in the video above, but here’s a list of what I think were his five most interesting, forward-thinking ideas:

On food security: “We can increase agricultural and production — production and productivity in the developing world, significantly in sub-Saharan Africa, we can take advantage of higher prices to create higher incomes, to help overcome poverty….”

On drought: “We help organize something that was actually started by Robert McNamara in the 70s, the Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research, and there’s great potential, again, from some of this — the research in seeds to these centers all around the world to fertilizers, to irrigation, to transport systems, the roads.”

On the World Bank’s partnerships: “Now, for some countries in sub-Saharan Africa, may not have the capability to do that, so we work with World Food Programme, UNICEF, and others on things like school feeding programs, which can become platforms for dealing with child nutrition and other aspects.”

On emerging and developing markets: “You know, America has about 4 percent of the world’s population. If we’re going to grow, if we want to continue to grow, we’ve got to be able to market at the rest of the world, and what’s really changed a lot is, including sub-Saharan Africa with infrastructure development, there is increasing opportunities here for investors as well as on the trade side.”

On gender equality: “So, let’s start with the basic concept, if you take 50 percent of your people and you don’t allow them to reach the potential, it’s probably not good for your economy.”

I knew before attending this event that Mr. Zoellick is a legendary expert who has a profound understanding of our complex global economy. To learn more about his views on development, read the transcript of his speech.

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 communiqué references the importance of implementing the Multi-Year Action Plan created at the 2010 Seoul Summit for various issues including (but not limited to) agriculture, domestic resource mobilization and infrastructure. Looking ahead, the G20 called for reports on these specific issues to be delivered in advance of the 2011 Cannes Summit.

While the G20 addresses several issues, one of the key issues this year is commodity (or food) price volatility and its impact on food security. This is a particularly salient issue since poor people in developing countries spend up to 80 percent of their incomes on food — and high food prices can hit hard at home. At their last meeting in Paris in February 2011, the ministers and governors were explicit about commitments to long-term investments in agriculture to enhance food security. At this meeting, the G20 requested final recommendations from advising groups on agriculture risk management and mitigation strategies in developing countries. Boosting farmers’ resilience to agricultural shocks is necessary for long-term food security in developing countries.

The members also agreed on the necessity for increased transparency in cash and derivatives markets. They called for recommendations on appropriate regulations to curb market manipulation that seems to be putting increased pressure on commodity prices. Increased transparency in the markets will promote price stability. With regulation and supervision, transparency will also reduce the opportunity for market manipulation.

The G20 also affirmed support for the use of innovative finance mechanisms to generate funds for climate change financing. Innovative finance entails resource mobilization beyond traditional development assistance sources to reduce the resource gap for developing countries. One mechanism that is increasingly gaining momentum is the Robin Hood Tax in the UK, which argues for increasing taxes on the financial sector. Other potential mechanisms include leveraging diaspora flows or remittances and unlocking private sector resources and innovation. The G20 tasked the World Bank with analyzing sources of resource mobilization from the public and private sectors, and in bilateral, multilateral and innovative forms. The G20 also prioritized finding effective ways to improve tax information sharing in order to increase financing from domestic resources and reduce dependence on external or donor sources of funding.

Recommendations on how to scale up and diversify infrastructure financing in developing countries are also solicited from the High level panel on infrastructure investment in advance of the upcoming Summit. The January 2011 IMF World Economic Outlook demonstrated that investment in Africa is worthwhile, with a projected growth rate of 5.5 percent in 2011 (especially notable when compared to growth rate in advanced economies of 2.5 percent). Encouraging increased and responsible investment in Africa, specifically private investment, is a difficult but necessary task for long-term sustainable development.

Photo courtesy of the World Bank

There are many common — and valid — answers to this question. Health, many argue, is fundamental, because a population stricken with disease cannot work productively, learn effectively, or care for their children or their communities. Others assert that no progress can be made without a stable agricultural base, which both nourishes people and provides them with a simple sustainable route out of poverty.

But what about peace? This week, the World Bank argued in its annual World Development Report (WDR) that countries suffering chronic violence and corruption, where people have no security over their possessions, their lives or their land, cannot even begin to address broader development issues. Their evidence is as startling as it is compelling: no fragile or conflict-ridden country has achieved a single Millennium Development Goal, while poverty rates are an average of 20 percent higher in these violent societies.

So why don’t donor countries start by looking at peace, rather than health, agriculture or any other issue?

Part of the answer is that it is difficult to know when and how the involvement of the international donor community is helpful; programs that appear to be meddling in the politics of other countries risk doing more harm than good. The WDR has some suggestions for appropriate programs, including technical assistance in ensuring that governments are well adapted to the fragile situation, investing in job creation in areas such as electricity and transport and helping these countries crack down on illicit trafficking.

Some donor countries have already taken this advice to heart. The UK recently pledged to direct 30 percent of its aid to unstable states and to support peace and security through programs that organize political debates in remote areas and help women run for office and access legal help.

The WDR also describes steps that fragile and post conflict states themselves can take to build a safer, more peaceful society. These include integrating local communities more into policing and conflict resolution systems, involving women in design of security and justice programs and launching high profile anti-corruption efforts to clean up government and win back public trust.

Some reports have argued that these findings mean that security should be elevated above health, agriculture, and other issues in the minds of donors. In reality, however, the WDR is arguing more that programs in other areas must be sensitive to the fragile situation in certain countries, and that complimentary programs aimed at reducing violence and rebuilding broken societies can make all programs more effective.

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.

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.

Stay tuned for more details.

Donor governments are meeting in Brussels, Belgium this week to complete the 16th replenishment of the World Bank’s International Development Agency (IDA).

IDA -– known as the World Bank’s “fund for the poorest” -– is one of the largest development financiers in Africa and the world’s least developed countries. Historically, Africa has received more of IDA’s funding than any other region, at around 50 percent. IDA funds are delivered through grants and interest-free, long-term loans.

These meetings will conclude IDA’s last replenishment before 2015 — so, the commitments made to IDA will be critical in helping the world’s poorest countries mobilize the funds needed to meet the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in Africa by 2015. In past decade, IDA immunized 310 million children, provided access to water and sanitation for more than 177 million people and brought better education to more than 100 million children each year. With strong commitments from donor countries, IDA estimates that it can immunize 200 million more children, give access to improved water sources to 80 million more people and train and recruit more than two million more teachers.

IDA is also responsible for many of the less “sexy” (but still critical) development projects in areas like infrastructure, institutional development and technical support. IDA financing is also a crucial complement to the efforts of other donors. IDA helps countries develop the systems and capacity they need to utilize other donors’ funds and build on the results that have been achieved. IDA is the glue that coordinates donor efforts and ensures that systems and capacity are in place to build on results and sustain long-term progress toward achieving the MDGs.

Later this week, we’ll take a look at how the IDA replenishment goes in Brussels, so stay tuned. In the meantime, feel free to check out some of the analysis going on over at the Center for Global Development.

Photo courtesy of the World Bank

Since I left ONE 10 months ago, I’ve been busy co-writing the Doing Business 2011: Making a Difference for the Entrepreneurs report, which was published by the World Bank and IFC last week.

Doing Business 2011 is the eighth in a series of annual reports that benchmark the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it around the world. A vibrant private sector, with firms making investments, creating jobs and improving productivity, promotes growth and expands opportunities for the poor.

A regulatory environment where new entrants with drive and good ideas — regardless of their gender or ethnic origin — can start their own business and where firms can invest and grow is essential for the private sector to prosper. That’s where the Doing Business report comes in. The report and related data-rich website present quantitative indicators on business regulation and the protection of property rights for 183 economies around the world.

So, where is it easiest and hardest to do business? As you might have guessed, doing business is the easiest in OECD high-income economies. On average these economies rank 30 (out of 183 total). Entrepreneurs in sub-Saharan Africa have it hardest, and the average ranking is 137 for these countries. Sadly, nine out of the 10 lowest ranked economies are in sub-Saharan Africa. These rankings reflect very high levels of red tape — starting a business still costs 18 times more and takes more than three times as much in sub-Saharan Africa as in OECD high-income economies (relative to income per capita). It takes a whopping 216 days to start a business in Guinea-Bissau, compared to one day in New Zealand. Exporting requires 11 documents in the Republic of Congo but only two in France.

But it’s not all bad news for Africa. In fact, the Doing Business database also tells the story of a dynamic continent making strides toward a business friendly regulatory environment. Rwanda, Cape Verde and Zambia were among the 10 economies worldwide that most improved the ease of doing business.

Rwanda moved up 12 places in the global rankings, while Cape Verde and Zambia rose 10 and eight spots respectively. Ghana led the world in making it easier for businesses to obtain credit. Malawi led in improving contract enforcement.

Since 2005, 84 percent of sub-Saharan African economies made it easier to do business by implementing regulatory reforms. Among the top 10 economies globally that made the largest strides in making their regulatory environment more favorable for business, four are from sub-Saharan Africa: Rwanda, Burkina Faso, Mali and Ghana. Overall, a third of the top 30 are in the sub-Saharan Africa (circled below in red).

There is still much to do in Africa to make it easier for local entrepreneurs. The Doing Business report does not measure all aspects of business environment that matter to firms and investors or affect the competitiveness of an economy. But as a co-author of this report, my hope is that this year’s edition will encourage policymakers in Africa to have another look at their business regulations and stimulate debate about what works in business regulations -– and how and why.

-Mikiko Imai Ollison, World Bank Group

A strong private sector is often a precursor for economic stability in a country, and accurately gauging the health of that indicator just became much more streamlined. Last Thursday, the World Bank Group released “Doing Business 2011: Making a Difference for Entrepreneurs,” an annual panoramic look at private sector development and business regulation for domestic firms across 183 countries.

The report analyzes data collected from June 2009 to May 2010 and ranks economies based on nine measurable areas: ease of starting a business, paying taxes, trading across borders, registering property, dealing with construction permits, getting credit, closing a business, enforcing contracts and protecting investors.

The Doing Business series has been a treasure trove of knowledge for policymakers and institutions as a tool for crafting reform within their relative economic contexts. One striking finding reveals that governments in 117 countries enacted 216 regulatory reforms geared at expediting the ability to start and operate a business, strengthening transparency and property rights, and improving the efficiency of commercial dispute resolution and bankruptcy procedures.

Singapore ranked first again in 2011, followed by China, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. Internationally, business continues to be easiest in the high-income economies of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and most difficult in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.

On a positive note, the report touts that in the past five years, of the 30 most improved economies, a third are from sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, the 10 most-improved list includes three from sub-Saharan Africa: Rwanda, Cape Verde and Zambia, in the company of Peru, Vietnam, Tajikistan, Hungary, Grenada and Brunei Darussalam. Developing countries posted increasingly active results. Since the 2010 edition, 66 percent reformed business regulation, up from 34 percent six years earlier.

Learn more about the report on the Doing Business website.