Irrigation has made a major contribution to poverty reduction in the past decades, enabling higher yields and better nutrition. Despite these achievements, large-scale irrigation schemes have usually yielded low returns and attracted negative publicity because of their adverse environmental and...

This Country Assistance Evaluation (CAE) assesses the outcomes of the World Bank's assistance to Turkey during the period July 1, 1993, to June 30, 2004. It focuses on the objectives of that assistance and the extent to which outcomes were consistent with those objectives. It looks at the Bank's...

Home to almost 500 million people, roughly half of whom earn less than a dollar a day, fragile states, until recently known in the World Bank as Low-Income Countries Under Stress (LICUS), have attracted increasing attention. The Bank identified 25 such countries in fiscal 2005 based on their...

This evaluation assesses knowledge-based activities in nine country programs selected from 48 knowledge-intensive programs supported by the Bank Group. It identifies the factors in the success or failure of those activities as they contribute to policy making or development outcomes. It also...

This report has been prepared in the context of a major global effort in the past eight years to better measure results in development assistance. The agenda for this effort was articulated and refined in a series of international conferences, beginning with the international conference on...

This country assistance evaluation reviews World Bank support to the Arab Republic of Egypt from fiscal 1999 through 2007. Egypt's economic performance over the period improved substantially. This was particularly true after 2004, following improvements in economic management, an increase in the...

The World Bank Group's positioning in relation to Rwanda's Vision 2020 goal of rapidly attaining Middle-Income Country (MIC) status reflected many of the elements that are critical to realizing the country's goal: (i) Under a first pillar of promoting economic transformation for sustained...

The World Bank Group is currently engaged in reflection and debate on how to improve the delivery of development support. Part of this debate concerns strengthening the knowledge agenda. The findings of this evaluation are particularly relevant because they speak directly to questions that the...

Land rights and the systems that administer them can vary significantly across the world and within countries (World Bank 2003). For a number of reasons, land rights may be unclear or insecure. Securing land rights plays an important role in driving economic growth and poverty reduction. In...

This evaluation assesses the development effectiveness of the World Bank Group's country engagement in Albania over the period Fiscal Years 11-19. The Bank Group made a substantial contribution to many reforms relevant to Albania's development priorities, including Albania's EU accession goals....