Search

6761. ABCs of the IFIs: The African Development Fund’s 16th Replenishment

Author:
Jocilyn Estes and Erin Collinson
Publication Date:
08-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Many African countries, particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa, continue to grapple with the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic while simultaneously confronting the challenges posed by slowing global growth, private capital outflows, debt distress, and the impacts of climate change. An estimated 55 million people on the continent have been pushed into extreme poverty since the onset of the pandemic. This devastating trend has been exacerbated by the ripple effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—supply chain disruptions, tightening fiscal space, and growing pressure on the cost of food, fuel, and fertilizer. International financial support for the continent has fallen woefully short of levels required to prevent the current crisis from derailing long-term development. The African Development Bank (AfDB) is the largest regional multilateral development finance institution on the continent. It provides critical financial support to countries across the region, including investment in vital infrastructure projects. The African Development Fund (AfDF) is the Bank’s concessional window, providing financing in the form of grants and concessional loans to resource-constrained governments responding to the growing challenges on the continent, including gaps in critical infrastructure and rising debt burdens. Amid ongoing and overlapping global emergencies, the stakes for the AfDF’s upcoming replenishment could hardly be higher. The AfDF is making the case to donors—who will come together later this year for a final meeting of the AfDF’s 16th replenishment (AfDF-16)—that the Fund needs substantial new resources to continue to support African people, businesses, and governments and make up lost ground in the fight against poverty. An ambitious 16th replenishment—coupled with policy and governance reform commitments—presents an opportunity for donors, including the United States, to complement long-standing investments in regional growth and infrastructure, offer a sustainable alternative to non-concessional Chinese lending, and make headway on the long road to economic recovery from the pandemic and worsening food security crisis.
Topic:
Development, Investment, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Africa

6762. Breakthrough to Policy Use: Reinvigorating Impact Evaluation for Global Development

Author:
Julia Kaufman, Amanda Glassman, Ruth Levine, and Janeen Madan Keller
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
In 2006, when a CGD working group published its report When Will We Ever Learn? Improving Lives Through Impact Evaluation, very few social programs benefitted from studies that could determine whether they actually make a difference. Since then, there has been tremendous progress in harnessing better evidence to inform public policy decision making, especially from impact evaluations of programs in low- and middle-income countries. Impact evaluation is a rigorous approach that establishes the attributable net impact of a project or program, making it uniquely well suited to inform decision making about resource allocation, program design, and scale up or drawdown. But the COVID-19 pandemic put a spotlight on an unfinished agenda, underscoring the need for high-quality, timely, and context-specific evidence. The pandemic has demonstrated the cost in lives and livelihoods when policymakers make decisions based on incomplete or outdated evidence and data. Approximately 15 million more deaths took place in 2020 and 2021 than would have occurred in the absence of COVID-19, and cumulative economic losses from the pandemic are expected to reach 13.8 trillion. Given the potential real-world benefits, why have decision makers within governments, aid agencies, multilateral organizations, and NGOs not yet fully harnessed the value of evidence—including from impact evaluations—for better public policies? Looking ahead, how can the development community renew momentum and broaden bases of support for impact evaluation and the wider evidence agenda? In response to these questions and building on progress to date, CGD launched the Working Group on New Evidence Tools for Policy Impact. The working group aimed to develop a renewed agenda for investments in impact evaluation and related evidence systems to enhance their value for policy use. It brought together a diverse group of policymakers and experts to review recent progress and examine how to address remaining obstacles to the use and utility of evidence for global development, with a focus on impact evaluation. This brief summarizes the final report of the working group. The report collates resources and insights on progress in implementing and using impact evaluations for decision making and proposes five ways to improve impact evaluation funding and practice, directed to the development community—government policymakers; other multilateral, bilateral, and philanthropic funders; researchers, and NGOs
Topic:
Development, Governance, Leadership, NGOs, and Impact Evaluation
Political Geography:
Global Focus

6763. Leveraging Knowledge Generation for Policy Impact: Recommendations for the World Bank

Author:
Amanda Glassman, Julia Kaufman, Ruth Levine, and Janeen Madan Keller
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Since the 2006 release of the CGD report When Will We Ever Learn? Improving Lives Through Impact Evaluation, there have been nearly two decades of progress in generating and using evidence for public policy decisions and development programs. There has been a steady increase in the number of impact evaluations—a rigorous approach that establishes the attributable net impact of a project or program. Their ability to assess attribution makes impact evaluations uniquely well suited for decision making. Nevertheless, the COVID-19 pandemic put a spotlight on an unfinished agenda and underscored the need for high-quality, timely, and context-specific evidence. Across sectors, decision makers in governments, aid agencies, multilateral organizations, and NGOs have not yet fully harnessed the value of evidence for better public policies. Numerous challenges limit evidence use. On the demand side, impact evaluations may lack relevance to policy decisions and fail to respond to decision makers’ priorities, timelines, and questions. On the supply side, decision makers often lack institutional incentives and funding to generate and act on relevant evidence. Current funding models compound these challenges by contributing to misaligned incentives between policymaker needs and academic researchers. In response to these challenges, CGD launched the Working Group on New Evidence Tools for Policy Impact to develop a renewed agenda for the next generation of investments in impact evaluation and related evidence systems to enhance their value for real-world decision making. The group brought together policymakers and experts to review the progress and obstacles to the use and utility of evidence for global development. Its final report highlights how far the field has come in addressing critiques about the scale, generalizability, and policy utility of impact evaluation, and offers recommendations to the development community on “what and how to fund to deliver on the promise of impact evaluation and bolster the broader evidence ecosystem.” The working group proposes five ways to improve impact evaluation funding and practice: (1) design evaluations that start from the policy question and decision space; (2) harness technology for timely, lower-cost evidence; (3) advance locally grounded evidence-to-policy partnerships; (4) enact new incentives and structures to strengthen evidence use; and (5) invest in evidence leaders and communities.
Topic:
International Cooperation, World Bank, Finance, and Banking
Political Geography:
Global Focus

6764. Mainstreaming Evidence Use through Locally Led Development: Recommendations for USAID

Author:
Janeen Madan Keller, Amanda Glassman, Julia Kaufman, and Ruth Levine
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
ince the 2006 release of the CGD report When Will We Ever Learn? Improving Lives Through Impact Evaluation, there have been nearly two decades of progress in generating and using evidence for public policy decisions and development programs. There has been a steady increase in the number of impact evaluations—a rigorous approach that establishes the attributable net impact of a project or program. Their ability to assess attribution makes impact evaluations uniquely well suited for decision making. Nevertheless, the COVID-19 pandemic put a spotlight on an unfinished agenda and underscored the need for high-quality, timely, and context-specific evidence. Across sectors, decision makers in governments, aid agencies, multilateral organizations, and NGOs have not yet fully harnessed the value of evidence for better public policies. Numerous challenges limit evidence use. On the demand side, impact evaluations may lack relevance to policy decisions and fail to respond to decision makers’ priorities, timelines, and questions. On the supply side, decision makers often lack institutional incentives and funding to generate and act on relevant evidence. Current funding models compound these challenges by contributing to misaligned incentives between policymaker needs and academic researchers. In response to these challenges, CGD launched the Working Group on New Evidence Tools for Policy Impact to develop a renewed agenda for the next generation of investments in impact evaluation and related evidence systems to enhance their value for real-world decision making. The group brought together policymakers and experts to review the progress and obstacles to the use and utility of evidence for global development. Its final report highlights how far the field has come in addressing critiques about the scale, generalizability, and policy utility of impact evaluation, and offers recommendations to the development community on “what and how to fund to deliver on the promise of impact evaluation and bolster the broader evidence ecosystem.” The working group proposes five ways to improve impact evaluation funding and practice: (1) design evaluations that start from the policy question and decision space; (2) harness technology for timely, lower-cost evidence; (3) advance locally grounded evidence-to-policy partnerships; (4) enact new incentives and structures to strengthen evidence use; and (5) invest in evidence leaders and communities. This brief details how USAID can mainstream evidence use across the agency. It is based on working group discussions, numerous consultations with experts including current and former USAID staff, and background research over the course of the project.
Topic:
Development, Local, USAID, and Foreign Assistance
Political Geography:
North America, Global Focus, and United States of America

6765. Breakthrough to Policy Use Reinvigorating Impact Evaluation for Global Development

Author:
Julia Kaufman, Amanda Glassman, Ruth Levine, and Janeen Madan Keller
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
In 2006, when a CGD working group, led by Ruth Levine, Bill Savedoff, and Nancy Birdsall, published its report When Will We Ever Learn? Improving Lives Through Impact Evaluation, very few social programs benefitted from studies that could determine whether or not they actually make a difference. Since then, the world has seen tremendous progress in harnessing better evidence to inform public policy decision making, especially from impact evaluations of programs in low- and middle-income countries. But COVID-19 has put a spotlight on an unfinished agenda, underscoring the need for high-quality, timely, and context-specific evidence—for both effectiveness and political credibility of the response. The pandemic has demonstrated the cost in lives and livelihoods lost when policymakers make decisions based on incomplete or outdated evidence and data. Given the potential real-world benefits, why have decision makers within governments, aid agencies, multilateral organizations, and NGOs not yet fully harnessed the value of evidence—including from impact evaluations—for better public policies? Looking ahead, how can the development community renew momentum and broaden bases of support for impact evaluation and the wider evidence agenda? These questions were the focus of a CGD Working Group on New Evidence Tools for Policy Impact, which set out to understand why these social benefits continue to go unrealized and to chart out a renewed funding agenda for greater value in government policymaking.
Topic:
Development, Leadership, Community, and Impact Evaluation
Political Geography:
Global Focus

6766. The IMF, Africa, and Climate Change—Making Sense of an Implausible Trilogy

Author:
Daniel Citrin and Daouda Sembene
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Evidence suggests that Africa is the most vulnerable continent to climate change. While African countries contribute relatively little to global emissions, they remain significantly vulnerable to the devastating economic effects of this phenomenon. This paper reviews IMF activities and explores how best the IMF could support efforts by African countries to cope with macroeconomic policy and structural challenges associated with climate change. To this end, while recognizing the relative significance of the overall IMF contribution to addressing this global challenge, we make several recommendations about potential ways to strengthen the role of IMF surveillance, capacity development and financing. First, IMF staff should ensure that policy advice in the context of global, regional and country surveillance fit specific circumstances and institutional capacity of African countries as well as their economic vulnerabilities to climate change. To enable timely response to climate-related crises, staff teams should also be prepared to provide advice on a flexible basis, without being tied to formal periodic work schedules. Additionally, the IMF could facilitate adaptation and mitigation by engaging in intensive outreach activities about the economic impact of climate change. Second, there is merit in developing comprehensive IMF capacity development strategies in close collaboration with the authorities in climate-vulnerable countries. For effective implementation, the IMF will need to identify and actively seek adequate financing for capacity development activities on climate issues. Finally, while the Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST) is a welcome addition to the IMF toolkit and represents a potentially significant source of financing for some sub-Saharan African countries, specific amendments could be considered notably with a view to limiting the potential cost for low-income borrowers to access its resources. Moreover, successful operationalization of the RST hinges on careful and flexible design of conditionality and how programs under the new facility will be linked to concurrent upper-credit tranche programs.
Topic:
Climate Change, International Cooperation, Finance, and IMF
Political Geography:
Africa

6767. A Package of Reforms for Financing Pandemic Preparedness and Response for the G7

Author:
Amanda Glassman and Eleni Smitham
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
COVID-19 has shown the detrimental consequences of insufficient and fragmented financing for outbreak preparedness, prevention, and response (PPR). As the world seeks to recover from the current COVID-19 pandemic, and to mitigate recovery needs for future health crises, more must be done to accelerate global efforts to ensure rapid, adequate funding and governance for global health security, which has been under-resourced and under-prioritized. The rationale for reforming and replenishing the global health architecture to prepare for the next pandemic is clear: to protect health, human lives, and economic well-being.[1] Without dedicated and accelerated investment—in scaled up surveillance, strengthened national health systems, enhanced research and development of medical countermeasures, and more—we will continue to face more frequent and more complex epidemics and pandemics in the years ahead, and be less prepared to stop them.[2] Without the capacity to surge financing to respond at-scale to infectious disease outbreaks, we risk a repeat of the devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Last July, the High-Level Independent Panel (HLIP) on Financing the Global Commons for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, mandated by the Italian Presidency of the G20, released the report A Global Deal for Our Pandemic Age, laying out policies and investments needed to reduce vulnerabilities to future pandemics.[3] Likewise, in 2021, the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response[4] described the shortcomings of the existing architecture and suggested similar policies for the future, including greater assessed contributions for the World Health Organization (WHO) and the need for dedicated financing to prevent and prepare for the next COVID-19 variant and pandemic risk. The Global Preparedness and Monitoring Board’s periodic reports went in this same direction[5] , as did earlier assessments following Ebola, SARS and MERS outbreaks though recommendations often went without implementation.[6] These reports and the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic itself have again made clear that existing mechanisms for financing pandemic preparedness and response are not fit-for-purpose, nor at the sufficient speed and scale needed to ensure global health security. Current financing for pandemic preparedness is small, fragmented, and concentrated in the health sector.[7] Different organizations across the global health and international financial institution architecture hold different comparative advantages in mobilizing and deploying monies and need to be fully financed to do what they are best suited to do. However, no institution (that is adequately funded, credible, and capable) is currently mandated to or accountable for ensuring pandemic preparedness, resulting in financing and accountability gaps, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where Global Health Security Action Plans too often go un-costed and unfunded.[8] Further, new regional organizations and groupings are leaders in their own development, and must be a central part of a new global health security architecture—the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), Partnerships for African Vaccine Manufacturing (PAVM), Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Forum for the Progress and Development of South America (PROSUR), among others, are examples. Adequate reforms and robust replenishments of global health organizations new and old are needed to ensure stronger global health security and pandemic preparedness now and in the future. External funders should take a comprehensive view of the major global health initiatives and consider how a range of reforms, when combined, have the potential to respond more coherently and efficiently to the financing demands related to the on-going COVID-19 pandemic, other macro risks that affect public spending on health, and in the face of future health threats. There are reasons for optimism. Unlike the experience during previous pandemic threats, COVID-19 has finally seen the International Monetary Fund become more aware and vocal on the need to address both COVID-19 and future pandemic risks as “systemic risk(s) to the global economy, not just the development […] of a particular country.”[9] Finance, health and development policymakers are increasingly coming together in different fora and recognizing the need to invest across sectors and to connect the international financial architecture with health initiatives in ways that will deliver better outcomes.[10]
Topic:
Reform, Pandemic, COVID-19, and Health Crisis
Political Geography:
Global Focus

6768. Let Them Eat Carbon

Author:
Vijaya Ramachandran and Arthur Baker
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
The push for the World Bank and others to link their investments to addressing climate concerns stems from a fear that, unless developing countries take action to decarbonize now, their economic growth will lead to vast emissions that will derail all global efforts to limit climate change. This approach, which treats low- and middle-income countries as a monolith, is unhelpful to the conversation about climate change. To understand better where emissions are concentrated and how to address them, we projected carbon dioxide emissions to 2035—the point at which observers believe they will level off in most countries due to technological advances and accumulating wealth—under some simple assumptions. Emissions from the world’s poorest 64 countries, those which get IDA loans, will remain very low for decades to come, even if their economies grow rapidly and without action to reduce emissions. Pressuring low- and lower-middle-income countries to replace plans for gas power with solar or wind energy will have limited climate benefits compared to replacing coal generation in richer countries. It is just more efficient—and just—to focus on climate mitigation where emissions are high, and on poverty reduction where poverty is high. And given that there is no sign of an increase in aid spending, especially in the poorest countries, rich countries must not cannibalize development aid or reinvent the development finance architecture
Topic:
Climate Change, Environment, World Bank, Finance, Banking, and Green Transition
Political Geography:
Global Focus

6769. Assessment of Expenditure Choices by Low- and Low- Middle-Income Countries During the Pandemic and Their Impact on SDGs

Author:
Sanjeev Gupta and Lucas Sala
Publication Date:
06-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
Until the COVID pandemic, public spending in low- and low-middle-income countries had been growing modestly. As a result, governments expanded service provision, including in social sectors, and enlarged welfare programs. This was made possible in part by domestic revenue growth. However, the pandemic has significantly lowered revenue receipts of these countries, while creating pressures to spend more on shielding the population and providing support to the economy. Unfortunately, health outlays did not increase as a share of total output during 2000-2018. The preliminary evidence compiled in this paper shows that health spending in relation to GDP increased virtually in all low and low-middle income countries in 2020, though not by as much as in advanced economies. However, higher health spending in low and low-middle income countries is unlikely to be sustained because of the pandemic’s adverse impact on revenues and other spending pressures. Furthermore, COVID has critically scarred the future productivity of these countries. Before the pandemic, the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030 was doubtful in part because of the slow pace in generating additional revenues from domestic sources. As the financing needs have increased, the achievement of these goals will be delayed beyond 2030, unless additional financing sources can be found. This means that policy actions will need to be taken by these countries to create additional fiscal space going forward. There is potential to raise more revenues from domestic sources by implementing politically difficult policy measures and generating savings by improving the quality of public spending, including on health.
Topic:
Development, Sustainable Development Goals, Sustainability, Pandemic, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
Global Focus

6770. The Future of the European Financial Architecture for Development

Author:
Mikaela Gavas
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Center for Global Development
Abstract:
In “The European Financial Architecture for Development: evolution or revolution,” Mikaela Gavas sets out the current European Development finance landscape, explaining the key players involved and highlights the challenges with the current systems, and underlines the importance of the EU and its various instruments.
Topic:
Regional Cooperation, Governance, European Union, and European Parliament
Political Geography:
Europe