The original mission of the CGIAR was a strategic, science-based focus on increasing "the pile of rice on the plates of food-short consumers," as characterized by a former chairman. It was to use the best science in advanced countries to develop technologies for the benefit of food deficit...

This OED report finds that the Bank has made progress on the environment, and notes that its commitments were not accompanied by precise goals and performance monitoring. It advances explanations of why things have turned out this way. It offers recommendations which focus on how to restore the...

This 2004 Annual Review of Development Effectiveness (ARDE): The World Bank's Contributions to Poverty Reduction, looks at the growth and poverty reduction experience of client countries. It assesses the extent to which Bank interventions have contributed to growth and poverty reduction and the...

This book finds that there is a strong positive association between including social development themes and project success. The Bank's social development resources are deployed in ways that are not optimally supportive of its social development goals, however. The study found that the Bank's...

This report addresses the issue of what publicly-supported programs and external assistance from the Bank and other agencies can do to accelerate attainment of targets such as reducing infant mortality by two-thirds. The evidence presented here relates to Bangladesh, a country which has made...

This evaluation assesses the relevance and effectiveness of Bank support for public sector capacity building in Africa, over the past 10 years. It draws on studies of Benin, Ethiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Mali, and Mozambique; aggregate assessments of country strategies and operations across the Bank's...

As part of the Bank's poverty reduction mandate, the Bank's 1994 Operational Policy on Gender Dimensions of Development aimed to reduce gender disparity and increase the participation of women in the economic development of their countries. This evaluation examines the relevance and results of...

The Millennium Development Goals aim for universal primary education by 2015 and gender equality in enrolments at all levels of education. The Education for All (EFA) initiative lays out a strategy for achieving these goals. The Bank's own strategy stresses the school quality aspects of EFA,...

This evaluation assesses the development effectiveness of the World Bank's country-level HIV/AIDS assistance defined as policy dialogue, analytic work, and lending with the explicit objective of reducing the scope or impact of the AIDS epidemic. This is the first comprehensive evaluation of the...

The Annual Review of Development Effectiveness (ARDE) 2003, examines the effectiveness of Bank support to borrower countries, in particular, the help to foster reform policies, and institutional frameworks. The Review focuses primarily, although not exclusively, on the years from 1999 through...