A CGD blog. Late last year, the World Bank Group issued a roadmap on its potential evolution in response to shareholder pressure at this year’s Bank-Fund annual meetings. The roadmap document has been widely shared with member governments. As reported by Reuters and Devex on the basis of leaked copies, it propo…

A CGD blog. What’s to love about the Effective Altruism movement (beyond the fact that it is a bunch of people who are committed to working to make things better for others) is that it thinks about everybody worldwide equally when looking for problems to solve. What’s to love a little less is that, when…

A CGD blog. It’s important that the upcoming US-Africa Leaders Summit focuses on much more than aid and security. The Biden administration should say a lot about US financial flows to the region and how they will be improved, but summit commitments must go far beyond that.

A CGD blog. The IFC isn’t finding more private sector projects to support in IDA countries even with the backing of both PSW financing and retained earnings used to hire more staff to look for projects. Absent actual projects to invest in, PSW resources are increasingly committed to regional and global faciliti…

A CGD blog with Samuel Huckstep. COP27, just concluded in Sharm El-Sheikh, was dubbed the ‘implementation COP’ by its Egyptian hosts. But it’s very difficult to implement without workers. The COP27 agreement emphasises that a “just and equitable transition” must include “workforce and other dimensions.” This short, vague language c…

A CGD blog. The Open Contracting movement, pushing to make government procurement worldwide considerably more transparent and efficient, has been a huge success. Today, more than 50 countries and cities are implementing policy changes from open electronic bid processes and publishing contracts to posting inspec…

A CGD blog. Last month, I spent an enjoyable if fractious couple of days in Vienna, taking part in a meeting of the UN Office of Drugs and Crime 2nd Task Force on the Measurement of Corruption. The task force is meant to help the office “define and refine methodologies for measuring corruption and to…

A CGD blog with Samuel Huckstep. The UK currently has a shortage of nearly 47,000 nurses in the NHS a Global Skill Partnership could help solve NHS staff shortages. The UK will gain much-needed skilled nurses at a cheaper cost than if they had been trained in the US, while the sending country benefits from…

A CGD blog. It is worth emphasizing that a healthy population is needed to produce the workforce that will generate economic returns from new infrastructure capacity. The relationship between health and economic dynamism runs in both directions, and that includes with infrastructure.

A CGD blog. The kind of investment sustainability that’s getting the most love at the moment is environmental sustainability: we want our buildings, machines, and infrastructure to be low carbon (as we should). But financial sustainability still matters, too: if they are to be a success, solar power plants and …