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...

This evaluation builds upon OED's earlier work to assess how well the PRS Initiative has helped thus far in putting the CDF principles into action, how relevant it is to countries' quest for sustainable poverty reduction, and how effectively the Bank has supported and aligned its own programs...

This report analyzes the effectiveness of the World Bank's lending support for the growing area of community-based development (CBD) and community-driven development (CDD). The latter supports the empowerment of the poor by giving communities control over subproject resources and decisions,...

This volume reports on a conference held by the World Bank's independent Operations Evaluation Department (OED) to discuss the Bank's rote in global program partnerships. The starting point for the discussions was a comprehensive review by OED of the effectiveness of 26 of the largest programs,...

The nine Pacific Member Countries (PMCs) of the World Bank Group are Fiji Islands, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Palau, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga , and Vanuatu. This evaluation covers Bank assistance to the PMCs since 1992. The Country Assistance...