The severe conditions in Zimbabwe, which reached a nadir in 2008 and 2009, led to a collapse of basic systems including the reliability and safety of water supply and sanitation services, leading to an outbreak of cholera with more than 4,000 deaths and over 90,000 people infected. The World...

After falling out of fashion somewhat (Schmitz, 2006) there has been a resurgence of interest in conditional or results-based instruments over the last few years. Faced with increasing pressure on budgets and sometimes frustrated with the perceived ineffectiveness of development spending, policy...

Almost a third of all Bank projects approved since 1997 have been water related. Water lending grew 55 percent in commitment terms during the period evaluated, and project performance has improved steadily, led by a significant performance improvement in the Africa region. Water has been...

Poverty Reduction Support Credits (PRSCs) were intended to help countries implement comprehensive, country-owned development strategies to promote growth, improve social conditions, and reduce poverty. PRSCs were intended to ease conditionality, make annual flows to recipient countries...

The World Bank's current gender policy resulted directly from the 2001 gender strategy endorsed by the board. This evaluation which covers the period fiscal 2002-08, finds that the Bank made progress in gender integration compared with an earlier Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) evaluation on...

The 2008 World Bank project performance data shows improvement in achieving development outcomes, allaying concerns that the weakened 2007 performance could signal a new downward trend. The decline in performance in 2007 was modest, and it has rebounded in 2008. Bank performance is rated on a...

The World Bank's Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) assess the conduciveness of a country's policy and institutional framework to poverty reduction, sustainable growth, and the effective use of development assistance. It plays an important role in the country performance ratings...

The Biennial Report on Operations Evaluation (BROE) in International Finance Corporation (IFC) assesses the adequacy, coverage, and quality of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) in IFC and makes recommendations for improvements going forward. It covers IFC management's M&E of its performance and...

The first of a series on climate change, this evaluation assesses International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and International Development Association (IDA) experience with key win-win policies in the energy sector. It focuses on energy price reform and policies for energy...

The Bank Group's lending and non-lending support for environmental sustainability has increased and improved over the past 15 years. But the institution needs to raise the priority it accords to this area of rising concern, strengthen internal cooperation, and work more effectively with its...