Briefing on the World Bank’s Six Strategic Themes Spring meetings 2008

Presenters

Hans-Martin Boehmer – Strategic office
Obiageli K Ezckwesli – Vice President for Africa, Poorest countries
Markus Kostner –fragile states
Nadir Mohammed – Arab world
Jan Weetjens – Research/Knowledge acting head

John Garrison – web portal on six strategic themes - http://www.worldbank.org/sixthemes

Hans presentation

• Six strategic themes are aimed at helping foster sustainable integration and globalisation
• It is not a strategy – it is to try to structure work around the strategy
• Much of this is not new work, ie Africa Action Plan
• Way of working is important to Zoellick
  • networking is important; esp South-South networks
  • this applies to WB Group as a whole – not just IDA or IBRD – it is supposed to be synergistic
  • This is not going to be a strategy in the traditional sense – it should be an ongoing dialogue
  • We do not anticipate separate free-standing dialogues on the WB Strategy – further discussions on each issue are part of framework but not a single document
  • Decisions and development policy must be decentralised – so strategy must be dynamic d adaptive

Obiageli presentation

• Africa is a piece of each of the themes – not a theme of its own – it permeates throughout
• Africa is both LICs and MICs, fragile states, GPG – regional solutions are important, knowledge is key to African development
• On LICs – how do we concentrate on certain approaches to focus ideas
• What can be done? What are the interim goals on MDGs – esp health and skills
  • Focus on acceleration of progress
  • On health – new players means more money; but need health systems as a key element
  • On skills development – basic education does not prepare people; we must have technical and vocational skills to stop youth getting stranded between different levels of education
    • In fragile states – we must build skills of ex-combatants
    • Unemployment situation of youth is to be solved with skills development
  • On trade agenda – Africa is an expensive business address for manufacturing
    • On labour level – Africa competes with India and China
    • But cost of doing business is high – need to focus on trade logistics and trade facilitation
    • Tariff and non-tariff barriers must be addressed
    • Need to connect African markets – economic integration in Africa
    • Board approved African economic integration strategy recently after numerous consultations
    • Regional solutions are efficient/economic – ie regional electricity/power pooling and sharing in Malawi reduced costs
    • Need serious investment in infrastructure – need $22 billion investment annually plus $17-18 billion for annual maintenance
    • Economies lose 1-2% of GDP because of poor infrastructure
  • On Private Sector Development
    • FDI and local investment (PSD side) needs infrastructure, stability, set rules of the games – institutional and regulatory capacity
      • Build capacity of countries to regulate business – need regulation
    • Access to finance is also a key problem – microfinance is good solution
      • This can also economically empower women
  • Agriculture and environment issues – ie high food prices
    • High food prices good put us back 7 years on poverty goals, so we need a quick response
    • Give fiscal space for countries to do programmes for food issues – ie finance seed distribution
    • Africa is not a net-importer of food historically – we need to focus on agricultural productivity
    • AU/NEPAD mechanism is being used – Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme
    • Recognise mistakes on agriculture in Africa – but we are learning; ie Malawi is happy with WB over the subsidies to fertiliser issue
  • Governance and social exclusion
    • EITI++ - the pluses are for getting governance issues addressed across the whole supply chain, regulation, taxes, monitoring, standards of best practices, investment plans, gathering of royalties and transparency, measurement of impact
    • This is a whole value chain approach – to ensure poor actually benefit
    • Transparency must have a benefit – not just for its own sake, must help the poor
    • Guinea and Mauritania signed on to EITI++
    • On inclusion – social safety nets, conditional cash transfers

Questions:

• Process for discussions going forward
• EITI++ - revenue sharing, problems of implementation, voluntary nature
• Prospects for replicating Malawian success on food security

Answers – Obiageli

• Plan for public debate: CSO strategic framework being developed now – to get systematic approach to CSO engagement
  • Pres Zoellick sees connectedness of CSO with government, so there is consultation
  • EITI++ will have country level discussions, Regional Infrastructure Process had lots of consultations
  • We have to be strategic in defining system and nature – don’t want some people to feel left out
  • CSO is huge on the agenda for Pres Zoellick
• EITI
  • Revenue sharing is important, but political economy issues
  • Be careful of silver bullets, you have to be careful of local issues
  • Don’t underrate success of current EITI, it gave some levers for CSO and NGOs to get access and press for info and access
  • In Zambia – the pres of Z says that he wants to do EITI++; better to get voluntary ownership not to force things
• Malawi
  • Need to replicate success of targeting of agriculture subsidies
  • There should not ideological issues, only needs to be designed so that it can not be abused
  • The WB helped Govt of Malawi to design the subsidy so that it could achieve the goal without being a drain on the Treasury
  • Trade in fertiliser can take over all agriculture policy if you aren’t careful – it can be captured so that a design issue is careful

Nadir Mohammed – in the Arab World

• This region has been underserved, it is the Arab League members
• Includes many African countries, huge differences in economic development
• Arab world has been least integrated in world economy
• Unique problems: Severity of water problems, gender, large public sector, education quality, also conflict
• Goal to achieve: foster integration; more inclusive growth; address specific priorities of above
• All 6 themes are relevant to Arab World
• We have had consultations for a while, Arab governments, in countries, Arab Leagues, in Egypt World Economic conference soon, etc

Markus Kostner on fragile states

• We had a head start, 15 years ago WB started work on conflict issues
• Reflections -> group in 3 areas: research/leaning, partnerships, inst and financial support
• Achievements recently:
  • Research: Breaking the Conflict Trap; Learning: trainings for governments coming out of conflict, training course for staff on working in conflict areas, research/seminar series on these areas
  • Partnership: the WB can not do this on its own, mainly bilateral donors in the past, tool with UN on “needs assessment”, principles of good engagement in fragile states developed
    • Example Common assistance framework (17 partners) to support DRC after elections early last year, WB did coordination
  • Institutional and financial support: Starting with IDA12, up to IDA15 – extra support to post-conflict countries – covers period of 10 years; engaging countries with arrears – extended from 3 to 5 years for access
    • Good practice principles
    • Policy on rapid response to crisis and emergencies
    • Framework for strengthened WB resources and capacity
• Goals: achieve results on the ground, ie Liberia; leverage our experience for our partners; expand range of partners exploit synergies in WB group; be more decentralised; have an even better impact.
  • Research/learning: a series of guidance notes for WB and partner staff – to capture operational ideas; more systematic approach to staff training – invite partner staff
  • Partnership: push to work better with UN system incl practical improvements; reach out to new international partners like MICs (BICS); additional funding through IFC for SMEs in fragile states – new investment fund;
  • Inst and Finance: established new state and peace-building fund – amalgamate LICUS and some other fragile states funds at the Bank; involved in anti-corruption work as well to get it working together
• Hans’ comments – new president’s energy is key, learning is still low so we need to know more

Jan Weetjens on research agenda

• Entire development agenda can not be determined by one agency; development process is a learning process
• To achieve priorities in other 5 areas – we need to work differently – needs to be a learning process
• Where is the knowledge about development sitting? It is sitting in developing countries, with partners, donors, NGOs
• It won’t work well to tell people that we know the answers
• Shift now that Bank’s share in capital flows is very small, relevance is not based on financial resources; so knowledge/learning is our best relevance
• Three areas of focus: partnerships, transfers, interpretation
• Partnerships: needs South-South and South-North; it is not knowledge transfer as before it is exchanging experiences
  • Communities of practice are important – specialists share experience; previously had thematic groups – but need to take to next level so that the thematic groups are larger than just the WB – bigger communities of practice
  • Tap into best global knowledge available – best experts like Nobel prize experts, we can invite people and create forums; but harder to make links between this top notch knowledge to task teams, partners, CSO, clients etc
  • Website – we need to improve our websites, we recognise difficulty and inconsistency, we will clean up our acts
• Making knowledge transfer to operations and vice versa
  • Empowering task teams so that the goal is solving problems, not pushing projects at the board
    • Demonstrate dialogue, looking at past experience
  • Systematic impact evaluation – need precise knowledge about what works and what doesn’t
    • Ie Community driven development – how to do women benefit or not from giving money to village councils – learn from the reality and measure what works
• Making sure global knowledge is adapted to local conditions – people respect and appreciate databases that are available.
  • We are weaker on interpreting knowledge and translating to local conditions
  • Must make task teams have space; we will have global practice groups so that country/regional specialists can cross regions and share experiences – like what McKinsey does

Questions

• On Doing Business and reports – concern is there method to engage governments for reform after a report is done – to make sure women can compete on an equal level?
• Will something new be done for accountability at the country level? How can you ensure that actions will be local
• How do we incentivise synergies for outcomes? WB/IMF are servants for member states; we need to change the paradigm for a coordinated effort – group sharing the power together

Jan on taking a report forward

• Learning process is making sure what is written is used – final delivery is not the report; but the dialogue based on that report in country
• People must get rewarded not for writing a report but for knowledge flow after

Markus

• On accountability – need to expand to more countries
  • Staff training is key – needs to adapt knowledge but also greater sensitivity
  • Centre and regional offices help local offices on strategies and engagement
• Incentivise synergies
  • This is a real objective and desire of Zoellick – great incentive to do it

Hans-Martin

• Zoellick will call for a “new multilaterism” – revisiting how institutions working
• He is resisting pressure for a WBG strategy – because he wants flexibility
  • Understanding role is important, but also understanding needs and addressing them is important

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Published: 11 April 2008 , last edited: 15 April 2008

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