In late June, the World Bank Group (WBG) released its new Corporate Scorecard. It replaces over 150 indicators previously used to evaluate individual WBG agencies with one set of 22 new outcome-focused indicators to be used by the entire WBG, organised around 15 outcome areas.
While the reformed Scorecard has been developed in the context of the World Bank’s Evolution Roadmap process, persistent commodity dependency, and what the Bank recognises is a crisis of development, it lacks any means to measure the Bank’s contribution to countries’ economic transformation, despite this being a thematic priority for the Bank. It also remains a focus for low- and middle-income countries as reflected, inter alia, in the G77 outcome document of the Third South Summit, which took place on the 60th anniversary of the Group in Uganda from 21-22 January, and in the African Union’s Agenda 2063.
In an April 2024 paper titled Driving action, measuring results presented to the WBG board of directors for approval, Bank management argued that the Scorecard represents a step change in the way the institution measures the impacts and effectiveness of its actions, as it focuses on “outcomes rather than outputs.” A 9 April WBG press release, quoting Anna Bjerde, World Bank Managing Director of Operations, emphasised this point: “[the Scorecard] provides full visibility on how well we are tackling the most difficult challenges like poverty, climate change, fragility and food insecurity.” The omission of the historical lack of economic transformation as a ‘difficult challenge’ to be urgently addressed is shocking, given that it can be thought of as intrinsically linked to development itself. As international development consultant Rick Rowden noted, “It is peculiar that the World Bank has chosen ‘reducing poverty’ as its main mission rather than promoting successful national economic development. If poverty could be seen as a symptom of the lack of successful national economic development, then why not just make successful national economic development its main mission?”
African economies have become less diversified and the competitiveness of their exports has declinedEd Brown, African Center for Economic Transformation
An “evolved” Roadmap: missing the forest for 22 trees
The new Corporate Scorecard is the result of the processes that culminated in the Bank’s contentious ‘Evolution Roadmap’ and ‘Playbook’ reforms (see Observer Spring 2024). The effort was initiated in response to renewed calls for international financial architecture reform, inclusive of multilateral development banks (MDBs), increased, inter alia, by the uneven response to and recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic (see Observer Summer 2022, Summer 2020). While the Scorecard’s outcomes focus and increased data and methodology transparency are seen as positive developments, concerns remain. These include the implications of reducing the previous 150-plus indicators to just 22, the narrow and controversial focus of the gender indicator on access to financial services – which ignores the new Gender Strategy’s unprecedented reference to human rights (see Observer Autumn 2024, Autumn 2023) and concerns with certain methodologies such as those used for the energy access and jobs indicators (with the former including both direct and indirect investments). The inclusion of ‘mobilising’ and ‘enabling’ private capital indicators and certain methodology choices also reinforce concerns about the Bank’s continued reliance on market-led solutions and the failed ‘billion to trillions’ agenda.
The lack of an indicator to measure economic transformation, arguably the key objective of any multilateral development institution such as the World Bank, provides further support for civil society’s critiques of the shortcomings of the Evolution Roadmap more broadly (see Observer Spring 2024, Summer 2023; At Issue Summer 2023). Erin McCandless of the University of Witwatersrand stressed, “It is also at odds with member state agreements reflected in priority principles underpinning the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – leave no one behind, and to target and reduce inequality – that underpin outcome-focused SDGs.” From the beginning of the process, civil society has called for the Evolution Roadmap to be informed by an assessment of the World Bank’s contributions to equitable and ecologically sustainable outcomes. The Bank should assess whether its programmes contributed to decreased exposure to external climate and other shocks, reduced frequency and depth of debt crises and commodity dependence, and improved position of low- and middle-income countries in the world’s highly unequal economic hierarchy. Not only has the call for the evaluation been disregarded, the tool developed to hold the Bank accountable and to inform and guide the ‘Knowledge Bank’ lacks the capacity to discern its impact on a key component of its development mandate and priority of its clients.
Structural transformation: conspicuous by its absence
The need to focus on policies that support economic transformation is evident from a variety of perspectives, not least to ensure equitable green transformation. The African Center for Economic Transformation (ACET), a pan-African policy institute, released its latest African Transformation Index last year, which showed that most African countries are not transforming their economies at a consistent or steady rate. ACET’s Senior Director, Ed Brown, said, “While some countries have made significant progress on economic transformation, on average it remains low…African economies have become less diversified and the competitiveness of their exports has declined – potentially diminishing their resilience to external shocks.”
As noted above, economic transformation is a key priority of the Group of 77 and the African Union with strong roots in the policy proposals of its predecessor, the Organization of African States, and it also comprises a key pillar of most national development plans. As the World Bank recognised in its April The Great Reversal report, the fate of borrowers from the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank’s low-income country arm, has deteriorated significantly. While the report focused on the recent reversals, a July 2023 report from US-based Center for Global Development (CDG) stressed, “of the 81 countries that were part of [IDA] in 1996 only 17 have graduated.” Even prior to the release of the Scorecard, civil society had been critical of the focus on the size of IDA’s 21st replenishment this year to the detriment of an urgent focus on economic transformation (see Observer Spring 2024; Dispatch Springs 2024)
The World Bank’s 2024 World Development Report (WDR), titled The Middle Income Trap, makes for further grim reading. Similarly to the IDA graduation figures, the report notes that over the last 37 years only 34 countries, with a population of only 250 million, transitioned from middle- to high-income status. Substantiating and substantially backdating the crisis of development narrative, the WDR stresses that, “… the general perception that the last three decades have been great for development…is because of abysmally low expectations—remnants from a period when more than two-thirds of the world lived on less than a dollar a day.” It concludes that their prospects have worsened.
Similarly, in contrast with the Scorecard’s lack of focus on economic transformation, the World Bank underscored in an 18 October 2023 blog that industralisation must form a greater part of the Compact with Africa. The G20’s initiative on “Supporting Industrialization in Africa and Least Developed Countries” launched at the 2016 Leaders’ Summit in Hangzhou, China, likewise recognised that “Industrialization is a critical component in economic transformation, job creation and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals” and called upon G20 states to actively support the process.
The Scorecard will be used until 2030 and will benefit from a mid-term review. The World Bank has stressed that the Scorecard is a work in progress and a “living document” with work on its methodology continuing and new details expected at the World Bank and IMF Annual Meetings in October. Given the context above, it is imperative that global civil society continue to hold the World Bank and other MDBs accountable for the fulfilment of their core development mandate.
