← This Week in Global Development
This Week in Global Development
A new World Bank initiative, and an infrastructure project in Africa
00:41:12
This week, we take a look at the Civil Society and Social Innovation Alliance, known as CIVIC, a new, forthcoming https://www.devex.com/organizations/world-bank-group-38382 initiative designed to support civil society organizations and social economy...
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- [00:04]
A
Hi, everyone. I'm Rajkumar, President and editor in Chief of devex. This week we'll be breaking down the big headlines in global development and bringing in some top experts to help us do it. If you want to follow along with the stories we're talking about, check out devex.com and subscribe to our daily newsletter, the Newswire. There's a link in the description. Follow us along on Twitter and you can see many of the stories we're talking about today. And we'd love to hear what you think this is this Week in Global Development.
- [00:38]
B
Welcome to another edition of this Week in Global Development. My name is Michael Igoe. I'm a senior reporter with devex. I'm delighted to be joined today by some great guests. We've got Ali Rahim, who's the program manager of the Global Partnership for Social Accountability at the World bank, and my colleague, Adba Saldinger, who I'm sure everyone knows from her byline as another senior reporter at devex. Hi, Ali. Hi, Adva. Good to have you both here.
- [01:05]
C
Hi. Thanks for having us.
- [01:07]
D
Hi, Michael. Good to be with you.
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B
So we've got a lot of ground to cover and not a lot of time to cover it. I want to jump right in. And we have a great opportunity here, I think, to hear directly from Ali about some of the stuff that he's been working on, which is really exciting, launch of a new initiative called Civic, which as I understand it, and Ali, you can explain it much better to us, is really sort of a re envisioning of the way that the World bank engages with civil society, which is, you know, one of the sort of topics and dynamics that we have at devex have kept our eyes on for a really long time and really, you know, gets to the heart of what the World bank is, how it works, what it's trying to accomplish and what the role of the communities that it serves is and the projects that it delivers. So I'm going to stop talking about it because you actually lead this initiative, Ali, and maybe you could just help us understand a little bit better how the World Bank's relationship with civil society is changing and how that's sort of dignified in the approach that you're taking through this new initiative.
- [02:13]
C
No, thank you, Michael. And I think we saw over the last year the important role civil society has had in the IDA replenishment, obviously, which is another point of discussion for this week and in the evolution process. And the bank is taken very seriously. We were aiming for the largest IDA replenishment and as part of that, had the most extensive global stakeholder consultations around IDA as well, with these regional and global IDA forums, and then also around the evolution, there was a very concerted effort to bring in the voices of civil society. But it's a long legacy that goes back 40 plus years. And I think it's been both a challenge and opportunity. When we think of times, the bank has really been renewed and there's been a rethink, I think back to when I started in the Wolfenson era in the World Bank. The atrium behind me is named after a man who really brought new thinking to the bank and new partnerships. And a big part of that was how do you open up the bank to the world? How do you build trust from the local to the global level? And I think in a world where trust is at the centerpiece of how we address so many of these intractable challenges, from climate to pandemics to fragility, government and private sector is going to be critical. And that's obviously the comparative advantage and the natural modality of how the bank is designed to work. But it's the vision that the other thing behind me here, the Global Partnership for Social Accountability, which has ran for 12 years now, was the first thinking around direct financing to civil society, that there is a need for the World bank to also stake and finance these actors and link them better to our operations. And that was created in the wake of the Arab Spring and other crises that reminded us that building trust between citizens and governments is critical to getting to economic and development goals. And so the re envisioning that Civic represents is, I think it's a different moment in time. And it's a moment in time where we're realizing the intersection of our traditional sustainable Development goals and economic growth goals with these interconnected global challenges. That's what the evolution of the bank is about. And there is a piece that's required for us where we have a comparative advantage to others of bringing in the ideas and solutions that emerge out of this third space, the social sector, whether it's around effectiveness, accountability, voice feedback on policy making, on program delivery, to solutions that are critical to sort of last mile reach in healthcare, to effective integrity of carbon markets, where we're engaging with those under the canopy to ensure that the credits that we're creating to move massive amounts of finance are really getting to those issues on the ground and those communities on the ground that are the stewards of those ecosystems. And all that work requires investments that are frankly much smaller than the larger Investments we're going to be ultimately making to governments in the private sector. But it's an essential piece of the system that needs to be built. And if we're building a renewed multilateral financial architecture, we need to have new tools to work on that. And Civic is one of those tools. It's not going to be the only tool. There's a lot of things that need to happen. There's a lot of excellent work on this happening across bilateral development agencies with the localization agenda and other agendas that's really trying to push solutions, efforts, ownership and agency to the ground level. But Civic is about the bank playing its role. And I think, you know, as we look to looked at the design of Civic, we said one of the key ways that the bank can add value is that there's this excellent ecosystem of innovations and solutions that are cultivated sort of from the community level, developed through networks and countries or even across regions. But often they halt at a certain level of scale because they're not always or often connected to the larger multilateral finance flows, the kind of policy change we drive with governments, the large scale, sector wide programs we delivered. So the question here is how can we use a bridging facility like this to be an enabler to find those scalable solutions to link them to our policy dialogue with government and in the end make us more effective. And it's also linked to a new commitment in our corporate scorecard. And Ajay announced both Civic and that commitment at his CSO town hall at annual meetings, is that we're going to have one of the 20 indicators in the dashboard of the scorecard on the bank's effectiveness be the quality of civic and citizen engagement. So you know, I think in this era we all realize that these kinds of partnership, this kind of trust building, these set of solutions are also a core part of multilateral development finance, just like they're part of the other development spheres.
- [06:52]
B
I'm really interested that you sort of linked it to the push for locally led development at the bilaterals. And it's not sort of just a World Bank, a new World bank project. It seems to be sort of part of a broader movement or a growing consensus within development about who should be at the table and what the table should look like when projects are designed or where the sort of consequences and implications of projects are considered. That's really interesting. And can you just weigh in on whether I understand this is a new initiative, but is it already sort of changing the Bank's approach? I have for example, the IDA Replenishment in mind. And Adva and I were talking about this and I would welcome her thoughts too. But I think there was an appreciation for the level of civil society involvement in this IDA replenishment round. I wonder if that's sort of connected to how you see the contribution of what you're working on.
- [07:48]
C
Yeah, absolutely. I mean I think it's very much connected to IDA and you know, the IDA team. Dirk Aki, you know the leaders at the bank on this have put a lot of importance onto one getting the voices of civil society in. And then if you read the executive summary of the IDA forum, this issue of partnerships financing solutions coming from civil society is very much respected and acknowledged and civic is put forward as one of the tools we develop to address that. And so I think it's really at the heart of connecting that rethink around development where we try to have more local grounding, that we support governments also on the supply side to build their capacity to engage, to have multi stakeholder platforms. You know, you think of sort of the large bets we'll be making. I think, you know, there are two examples that I think are quite germane. I mean there are many. But when you look at, let's say large scale renewable infrastructure investment in a lot of these countries, you know, the amount of land you require, the kind of resources that are required, the, the co benefits that need to accrue to communities adjacent to these large scale investments, the land acquisition, all these kinds of things require a lot of upstream work in the development of social license. I mean the world, both developed world at north and south are littered with examples of these large scale infrastructure projects that get stalled when they don't work upstream in that, in building that social license. Now, you know, when these projects are developed in the United States or in Europe or in Canada, where I'm from, you know, these processes are often very much built in. And after generations of learning, I mean where I come from, you know, we learned on hydropower dams and indigenous communities, you know, over decades of struggle in Canada about how to develop. Now we have one of the largest, you know, hydro infrastructures in the world. But that, that community engagement, community building, benefits sharing, that's all very institutionalized, systematized and very much funded. Right. It's a core part of how you deliver these kinds of projects. So I think we really have to not think of this as an add on. We have to move beyond thinking of, you know, something like consultations and engagement just being one offs and actually build the systems we need And I think our governments need our support to build those systems. You know, how do you build a national feedback system? How do you use digital tools to ensure people can give grievance feedback? How do we deploy new kinds of technolog like AI so we can take that qualitative feedback from people and understand how to target and optimize services? I think both today the sort of social technology and the actual technology are at a level where we have a lot better expertise and experience, whether it's south, south, north, south to share experiences and build things that are systemic, but they do require some amount of resources. The resources relative to larger technical investments may be small, but there has to be a connection. And I think the multilateral space also also has to be involved. This can't just be an effort of bilats and philanthropies. We're very advanced in a lot of this work. So bridging those funding ecosystems and those solution ecosystems is also super important. You know, if this space is not something the World bank is able to really tap into, it's a gap. And you know, I was really inspired when I first came to the bank 20 plus years ago, you know, as a young, you know, bushy tailed kid who wanted to be in development and seeing Wolfenson really bring that alive in the atrium of the bank. I remember walking into my first development marketplace and seeing all these organizations from around the world saying, hey look, we have solutions. We can connect to what the World bank does with our countries. And so like we want to renew some of that. Of course some of that is still happening but I think there's a scale of it that, that, that has so much promise, especially as we're thinking of a lot of these new cross cutting global challenges where you know, local solutions, local knowledge, local support and buy in and trust are just integral to reaching the goals we're setting.
- [11:36]
D
Just ask a quick question about sort of the practicality. The World bank is largely set up to provide loans or you know, I mean obviously IDA countries get grants. But part of the question then is how do you, how do you fund this? Does the World bank need to create new mechanisms? Does it need to change how it's thinking about funding projects in order to actually work with civil society? Because civil society can't like government repay your loan in the same way and probably isn't going to take a loan. Right. So how are you thinking about sort of the mechanics of how you're actually going to get this funding out there?
- [12:08]
C
No, that's, I think that's the critical question, it's a question frankly we've struggled with for some time. And then when the GPSA was created, you know, Zellick had a vision. Can I create an IFC for civil society? It's very hard to create an IFC for civil society at the World Bank. And so but you know, I think the board and management realized at the time, okay, we need to find ways to try. And I think it was, it was a good pilot, but it remained a pilot, to be candid. Right. And I think those financing and mechanics challenges, those nuts and bolts were at the heart of it. So I mean, it was set up as a multi donor trust fund as Civic will be as well. And we really see Civic as a bridging and enabling facility. And so, you know, there are many multi donor trust funds operating at scale in the bank. And there's a question, does nesting some of the global resources we have for this work in the multilateral system in the bank? I mean, we have a vision that this could also serve other multilateral development banks. And we're in discussion with other global funds and such. But is there a comparative advantage to nest some of these resources? Our argument is yes, because it connects it to the ecosystem. And so that's really the idea is that a portion of World bank resources, a portion of bilateral resources, a portion of philanthropic resources come together and not only to have pooled resources, but all to start to pull some of those solutions and networks. You know, an ngo. There's a great article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review by one of the foundations that's doing this work about why should you, why should a philanthropy put its money in the World Bank? And it's exactly making that argument of the connectivity that the different systems lack and that bringing these together then achieve scale. This is the Chandler foundation. The case was on beneficial ownership tracking. So you know, who gets contracts allocated to them. And then working with the World bank project and strategy in Malawi to really scale that nationwide. And saying, you know, if we had just done this ourselves, we wouldn't have had that capacity to scale and use the policy dialogue of the bank, use the project portfolio. So we will need donors to come into this. You know, we will, we're working on seeing what the bank's core contribution is. The bank was contributing for 12 years into GPSA. And then we're also, you know, in broad discussions with a range of donors about funding this. Now the, the funding, I think you have to look at it as bridge financing. I think Civic is designed to crowd in Some of these solutions connect them to bank projects and there is an ability for projects when they're designed a certain way to have certain kinds of non governmental entities also be executing agents. There's means where we can have broader social procurement. And there are examples, especially in FCB settings where we're doing this because governments sometimes aren't able to deliver or receive IDA funds in Afghanistan, in Yemen and Somalia, et cetera. There's many places we have examples of this. But I think beyond those fragile places, there are ways where we can connect government and the social sector and have a more continuous way of delivering quality services actually necessary in many areas. And we do it, there are examples of this, but it can be ad hoc. So our hope is something like this can help systematize it more. The approach to working with the social sector, when it's too fragmented in the bank, it's hard to have a coherent approach. So you need to do this locally. Our country office need to drive this with government clients. But we need a bit of a global framework and we need a way to connect all these interesting areas of funding and solutions which, which right now are thriving in the world but often fragmented.
- [15:38]
B
Yeah, super interesting. I, you know, I'd be curious to hear what sort of uptake and reception you're getting from some of the, you know, potential donor countries that you're approaching with this. If you're seeing, you know, that there's a real hunger for it among, among donors or if they need to be convinced, you know, that, that they should be pulling funds into the, the civil society space. And you know, I asked that within the context of a challenging time to be asking donors for, for funding. We've just seen the IDA replenishment that we've mentioned a couple of times. The magic number of $100 billion was reached, the announcement was made. But I think as we've been doing a little bit of digging and others have, there's some questions buried in there about the level of commitment and the downward pressure on some of these really critical funds. So that's all just to say, you know, I'm sure it's not an easy time to be, to be going back to donors and saying, hey, by the way, we would also like your support for, for this new exciting idea that we have be curious to hear about, about that reception piece of it, but also any thoughts that you have about the either replenishment and what we should make, you know, of the news there. And advai, you've been doing a lot of work on this too, so. So jump in at any point.
- [16:59]
C
Yeah, no, it's a great question. Look, Mike, we know it's, it's a tough time to raise money, you know, you know, I'll be candid. And you know, we've been talking to a lot of donors. Last week I spoke to the whole group of OECD DAC civil society department heads were convened in Dublin, virtually connected with them and, and you know, brief them on civic. And there's a lot of interest and there's a lot of understanding of the theory of change. But you know, it is a constrained environment. There's ODA cuts across most of those countries right now. A lot of them are. A lot of the DAC CSO programs do also work through their national CSO networks. So you know, looking at something multilateral can be challenging at times. You know, we've had in depth discussion with Samantha Powers team at usaid and their localization team and their multilateral team are very interested in this concept. Seeing that harmonization we talked about between that broader localization agenda and what role the multilateral system in the World bank play in that. So I think there's a lot of policy resonance, but the fundraising is challenging. I mean, even philanthropies, you know, we do have an initial commitment from a great partner that we're just finalizing with, the Ford foundation, who was one of the inaugural founders, also the gpsa. So their foundations coming together, especially those. I mean, Ford has been the traditional global leader in civil society work, actually development, you know, pioneering global philanthropy in that space for decades now. And their signal is, the signal for those who are interested in supporting this is we need to connect these ecosystems. We need to really have connectivity. We can't have this separate civil society, social sector innovation piece and not use one of the largest scaling agents. We have to really bring those into the large scale efforts. Because that's what often happens is we have these excellent programs that are funded that really show reach and impact. But then you look at the health sector in X country, you look at these programs that philanthropy and bilads have funded and then you look at the bank's larger health sector reform and it may not really connect those two. So where can we find that connectivity? And I think the moment is also interesting. I mean, it goes back to that trust issue I raised. There's a lot of challenges around that trust right now. And so as we rethink global governance, we rethink multilateral finance, how are we thinking about trust? And trust really, really starts at that local level. I mean, we've seen that time and again. And so, you know, while this is certainly no panacea, you know, what I encourage donors to think about when we talk about this is connect what's at the thrust of your bilateral program also with how you think about development in multilateral context. Sometimes they're somewhat in parallel. And so many donors at the core of their bilateral aid program will be building trust, building local delivery, empowering local actors. But, you know, that's less a focus in their multilateral development program. Now, in the end, we have to be an actor that primarily funds government, that the ida. IDA is a vital resource. And, you know, I'll bridge into that, but then maybe ADVA can, can, can go deeper. So I think, you know, what you started with. I'm very proud of the IDA the World bank raised this time round. Given the challenges we're seeing in the world right now, to see the countries of the world in real terms, nominal terms match or exceed what was there last time around, I think is pretty remarkable. It's a testament to countries seeing just how important a vehicle like IDA has. I mean, would we have wanted more? Of course, everyone could have wanted more. But in this climate, to raise that volume, I think is a testament to the commitment that's out there in very challenging circumstances. And so how do we leverage that best? And I think leverage is not just about the leveraging ratio. Leverage is also going to be about trust in countries with diminishing space to borrow and challenges and issues of trust and issues of governance. How are we also going to bring in people, community, civil society to be part of that compact? They were part of the compact of driving for an ida. But I think one of the things that we heard from a lot of civil society, and it's in there. You can read the staff note that the bank released responding to the CSO comments on the replenishment paper. It's posted on the website. But, you know, they want accountability, you know, they want to be involved, they want to have a voice. They want from the local to the global. So we have to start building out that architecture because it goes to the effectiveness and quality of ida. Quality will be about speed, it'll be about efficiency, but it'll also be about trust, voice and engagement.
- [22:00]
D
Yeah, and I'll just jump in quickly on ida, just so if folks aren't familiar, the number that donors contributed to IDA this time around was $23.7 billion. That is up very slightly less than 1% from the previous IDA. Replenishment. And I think one thing that's important to note is that most people going in said that the bank probably would need closer to like 27 billion to hit that 100 billion mark. The way IDA works is that it takes those donor contributions, it can leverage them and issue bonds on the market, so they get about a 4 to 1 leverage ratio. So they can turn that 23.7 billion. Math's a little fuzzy to get to 100 billion. So I think there are some questions about how does the bank turn this money, which it's marginally more than the amount it got last time, which resulted in a $93 billion IDA, into $100 billion. And I think there's some concerns that it does that in a way that undermines some of the important qualities of IDA in terms of the amount of grants it's giving. One of the things we know about IDA is that in recent years it's been giving more grants, proportionately more in grants than in loans. One of the interesting things about this replenishment is that it's giving countries some choice in sort of how they're going to receive funding, so they can choose to receive a smaller amount of grant funding or a larger amount of very low cost loan funding. And so I think one of the things that, you know, a lot of people have said is in this ida, there is even IDA has always been known as an instrument that's really driven by country priorities. Countries can borrow for the things that they feel are important. This, I think, takes it even a step further. You see a lot fewer requirements in terms of policy requirements and how funding is going to be spent this cycle. So I think that'll be interesting to see how all that plays out with ida. There are some folks in civil society who weren't happy with the reduction of certain requirements, particularly on the gender front, and concerns that not having sort of those specific policy signals would result in less of a focus on gender. I think one of the things that's also tricky is that there are questions about whether the incoming Trump administration will honor the pledge that President Biden made, which was 4 billion. So what happened last time around is that Trump came into office and he cut the contribution by not a huge amount, but he did cut it. And if you do that, then it's below the previous item number. So I think there, there are still some sort of outstanding questions and challenges ahead. And I think, you know, we were talking about the difficult environment. One thing that made this really difficult, this IDA replenishment, is even Countries who increase their contribution, like in Japan, because their currency value has dropped against the dollar, they increased the amount in yen that they gave, but it was only a flat contribution and we saw that a lot. So countries were having increased by, you know, double digit percentages to just match where they were last time. And so that was another thing that sort of put pressure on this replenishment and getting to a bigger number.
- [25:13]
B
Yeah, that's such a great recap, adwa. Encourage everyone to go and read the work that you've done and that some of our other colleagues have done on the IDA replenishment. And I think you've pretty well illustrated the sort of perfect storm that folks were facing when they had to go out and have these really difficult meetings with, with donors. And you know, I think it's sort of one of the questions that I come away with is, you know, how important is it to declare success at the end of the day here? You know, and I think that's a question that folks have. And you know, clearly the, the calculus was that it's important to declare success in this case. And so it'll be, I think, important to follow through on the reporting side, on the accountability side. All of us in this podcast are in this business of accountability to sort of see how it plays out over the course of implementation.
- [26:13]
E
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- [27:05]
B
You mentioned about the Trump administration sort of uncertainty that comes with the Trump administration's arrival in a month or so before we get there. We've still got a month of the Biden administration left and President Joe Biden is making full use of his time by fulfilling a promise to visit Africa, which he did recently and which you wrote about. You've got this really great story about U.S. engagement in the libido corridor in Angola. I think what's sort of a, I mean, it's funny to say it, but sort of a new approach to US development engagement that seems to be emerging at the very end of this administration. Do you want to maybe talk us through that a little bit? And, you know, given that this is sort of an infrastructure economic growth, you know, initiative, I'm sure Ali has some thoughts too about sort of what it might signify in terms of how the world's largest bilateral donor is engaging here. But adva, take it away.
- [27:58]
D
Yeah, I mean, I think at a basic level, the libido corridor is a massive infrastructure project that's designed to build and refurbish rail lines to connect the drc, Zambia and Angola to the libido port in Angola to create new pathways for shipping. I think one of the things that's important to note is that I think a key driver of this is creating new pathways of shipping for critical minerals to change the dynamic in the supply chains. China controls a lot of the critical minerals today. This project is definitely about countering China and about sort of creating a different alternative to China's Belt and Road initiative and to basically say, like, hey, the US is also in this game of large scale economic development. And I think that's what you were sort of hinting at that over the years, the US Government has not done a lot of large, like in the last few decades, large scale infrastructure development has not been sort of a core part of what the US government does outside of maybe the Millennium Talents Corporation, which does do infrastructure projects. But outside of that, it hasn't been a big priority. And you say that this is coming at the very end of the Biden administration. I'll note that this project has been in the works for a couple of years. And so I think this ideology and this thinking has been sort of emerging and coming about. And we have seen, you know, sort of with the Prosper Africa Initiative, which was created in the Trump administration, but sort of really beefed up and put into practice in the Biden administration, this effort to think more about trade relationships, about economic development, in how the US is engaging with Africa. And I think a lot of this is driven by, you know, this is what African leaders are saying that they want from the US and the idea is that it's not just a rail project, but it's, you know, designed to be an economic corridor. So I think one of the things that's interesting is that you're starting to see some of the announcements of US and other sort of investments, particularly in the agriculture space around this sort of rail corridor. So I think one of the interesting things, as someone who's looking at it from more of a development perspective than just a foreign policy perspective, because you understand some of the foreign policy motivations is really how much economic growth or economic benefit actually accrues to the communities along this corridor. And I think that's one of the things that sort of remains to be seen. But it is an example of sort of across US Government, a lot of agencies getting involved, putting money, time, effort, it's obviously been important at the very top. It's, you know, Biden went and visited the libido corridor. That should signal something. And I think, you know, a lot of the questions I talk to people about also were how replicable is it? Right? Because the idea is if this is sort of the new vision of how the US Is engaging in large scale infrastructure, you got to have more than one. And it's also a part of a broader G7 initiative. And so I think there are some others that are sort of in development or in the works. But the reality is that this type of project takes a lot of time, bandwidth, effort, et cetera. So we'll see how many more if it really emerges as a model where the US Is doing a lot more of this. And I think some of the questions still exist around is this, this more a play for making it easier to extract natural resources, how much local development ends up happening? Do we see, you know, like local governments want to do more value addition, right? They want to be building the factories, the smelters, whatever. So they're not just exporting the raw products. So how much does that become part of this overall project, I think is also an outstanding question you asked about, like, what comes next in a Trump administration. I think the signals that we've gotten. A few former Trump administration officials who worked a lot on Africa have been asked this question. And I think it could be a project that's consistent with what we'll see in an incoming Trump administration. I think there will be much more of a focus on economic growth. And our colleague wrote an interesting story sort of this week about how economic growth is maybe been sort of a lost objective at usaid, partly because of so much earmarking at the agency that makes it hard to carve out money for that priority. But I think we will see that as a priority for the Trump administration. I think there's always the question of whether an administration decides, like, hey, yes, we want to, you know, continue something that the previous administration started, but, but I think it could be consistent with the type of projects they want to do and certainly with the sort of countering China Chinese competition policies that we expect to come out of the administration.
- [32:54]
B
Yeah, thanks. I mean, certainly another case where civil society accountability is going to be critical to, you know, make the difference between whether it's an extractive versus, you know, participatory, you know, broadly beneficial kind of project.
- [33:09]
D
And there's like 500 kilometers more than of greenfield railway. So that requires, that will have an environmental impact. It will require some displacement. And so I think really thinking through how that's managed will be important. One of the things that's kind of interesting is often, you know, the government will make a concession for a rail project like this and then they'll manage sort of the relocation of people. In this case the Africa Finance Corporation working with the government. But they're going to be sort of, they're the lead developer on the greenfield railway, the sort of new rail that's being built and they're actually going to manage that project. So I talked to them a little bit about that and about bringing, they're going to, you know, bring in experts to try to really capitalize on best practice. But I definitely think that's one thing to be watching. Anytime you're talking about these really large scale projects, there are a lot of risks that need to be managed for. And I think, you know, another thing I was talking to people about is like local community right now there's not a lot of traffic on the existing rail line. Local communities walk along those tracks. They're setting up shops on the tracks sometimes. Right. So there are really important community engagement dynamics that are going to have to come into play. And really thinking through how communities are using the existing area land, rails, et cetera.
- [34:26]
B
Let me just turn that back to you, Ali, for the last word. I mean, I wonder. So we heard Samantha Power at the Council on Foreign Relations this week make the point that ADVA was referring to about USAID sort of needing to get back in the game on economic growth. Ajay Banga has sort of begun framing the World Bank's mission in terms of job creation or sort of economic growth, you know, outlook. What do you sort of make of that? And you know, clearly that sort of would suggest there's a huge imperative here for civil society to be involved from the outset to make sure that this is inclusive economic growth. And you know, broadly, broadly shared.
- [35:03]
C
Look, I mean, years ago, you know, I worked for Jim Kim, you know, when he was at the bank as well. And you know, we were coming up with the Twin goals and remember, you know, boost, you know, ending poverty, but boosting shared prosperity. Right. How is group growth equitable and inclusive? And for growth to happen at some point when it's not equitable and inclusive, there are societal disruptions to growth. Right. So I think inevitably large infrastructure is super important. The bank obviously has been in the business of large infrastructure since its inception and early loans and so and you know, others will come in and I think, you know, Adva's point, I mean there are the points of course of adverse environmental and social impacts that need to be managed, you know, displacement, economic livelihoods, you know, around along a large alignment, all these are important. But I think there's a broader set of engagements that need to go in to these kinds of investments for them to be sustainable. And I mean if you look at integrated development strategies in the developed north which involve large scale infrastructure, there's so many considerations being put into what that infrastructure investment catalyzes from the direct job creation that happens to the kinds of companies that benefit from the contracts. There's a lot of ripple effects that you don't necessarily concertedly think about when you're just approaching it from a finance and asset perspective. Right. And so a lot of, you know, capital allocators in the Global north are thinking about these things much more broadly with their sustainability and ESG agendas. But even for the World bank, it, it would represent a renewal. I mean I'm thinking about the Mission 300 which is also going to be a massive set of infrastructure investments in Africa and the renewable transition more broadly. And you know, we've seen the history of what happens when you have a massive uptick of large scale infrastructure investments into a country. You know, there's a challenge in how those resources are allocated, how they're used effectively, who benefits from them, what kind of companies win contracts, et cetera. So around that you do need a broad set of accountability engagements. You need to think about the co benefits that are created. I think it really, as we drive to more of these large scale hard investments, it's not in lieu of the software that needs to happen. And I think there's a need for renewal around the discussions that created the Open Government partnership, this Wolfenson speech a generation ago on the cancer of corruption. I think all these things are going to the center of the trust issue. I think at the core of the international system. I had gone back recently reading the World's Banker by Sebastian Malaby, which anyone who wants to sort of understand the evolution of the World bank should read and there was a great quote from Henry Morgenthau, who's reflecting about why him. Dexter, why Keynes came together in Bretton Woods. It wasn't because of complex financial theory they wanted to invent the Bretton woods institution. It was to address this issue of diminished trust that led to the rise of fascism. What are first principles? Why do these things exist? I think people are always at the core. How do you prevent disillusionment? How can economic development and growth be seen by the people of the world to benefit them and to build trust? And so how are we building our investments to drive that? There's a great article in the FT about this this week on It's a former chief economist of the bank of England challenging macroeconomists to rethink what social capital means and just how critical it is to driving to all these goals we're setting. Then we've forgotten, you know, Rod Chetty's, you know, landmark studies which will hopefully get a Nobel Prize soon in the US has shown that intergenerational mobility, all these things, they come back to these basic things, but the links between people, the trust they have in institutions and the trust they have in each other. And if that's not part and parcel development, you know, even in the development space, those of us who work on participatory local development say, well, develop these. I ran these beautiful projects, I love them about community development, but it's frankly probably more important to have this embedded into the large scale energy projects than to have my own community development project. So that's, that's the sea change I think we need to see. Not there should be more of this or more of that, that this should really be the DNA of how we do development across multilateral, bilateral, philanthropic, whatever it is. This should be at the heart of the new development. And I think we have bits of that I don't want to oversell or over promise. Building something like this is going to take a lot of effort and a tough fundraising environment. But I think the DNA of what we're trying to build, what we're trying to encourage, what we want to be in the DNA of development, I think our leadership here supports that goes down to that. We have to, you know, think of new ways. You know, the old just won't be sufficient for the, for the scale and volume of what we're talking about. You know, it's a brave new world. It needs to be. And so, you know, we're trying to put a bit of new thinking into this, provide some institutional solutions. But I think that, I mean, it's where we need to go. We need to make these massive investments, but we need to do it in a way that's equitable and inclusive and that those can't just be buzzwords. How do we make that real?
- [40:28]
B
So let's leave it there. It's a good question. Thanks for bringing it up. Thanks for connecting this to the bigger picture. Ali Adba Ali, thanks so much for joining. Really.
- [40:37]
C
Thank you. Great to be here today. All right, take care. Bye Bye.
- [40:41]
D
Thanks, Michael.
- [40:41]
B
You too.
- [40:45]
A
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