Quality of WB funding to Africa critical as quantity

The devastating floods in Kenya are a stark reminder of the catastrophic effects of climate change on ordinary people and the need to dramatically scale up development financing in response.

It is crises like these that have led the World Bank to move towards a clearer focus on a “livable planet” as part of its large-scale reform process.

Coincidentally, today, on the other side of Nairobi from the flooded shacks in Mathare, African Heads of State and Government are set to meet to support an ambitious replenishment of resources for the bank’s facility for low-income countries—the International Development Association (or IDA21, as the current replenishment is known).

This meeting follows the recent World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington, DC, at which there was a push for a record $30 billion in pledges for IDA, which could open up access to more than $100 billion for developing countries in the form of grants and low-interest loans (more than 75 per cent to Africa).

This financing has never been more crucial as African countries face climate-related disasters, difficult economic headwinds, rapidly growing populations, mounting public debt burdens and democratic and security challenges.

This recent memo to African Heads of State—led by the ONE Campaign—lays out in more detail exactly what a large group of African civil society, think-tank and other networks feel these leaders should push for as part of the Nairobi meetings.

The quality of the funding is as critical as the quantity. We must ensure that platforms exist to translate development commitments made by African governments into improved lives for citizens and that communities have the ability to meaningfully engage in the design, oversight and management of dollars received in their name.

Too often, World Bank resources (and taxes collected by governments) are lost through opaque decision-making structures, corrupt contracting mechanisms and inefficient delivery processes.

The scale-up of IDA resources for Africa has to be matched with the concomitant growth of citizen engagement or else the World Bank will undermine its own effectiveness. The good news is that platforms to do this exist, including within the bank itself.

For example, the bank’s Locally Led Climate Action efforts with Kenya have devolved climate finance in ways that have helped to address critical environmental challenges locally while also reinforcing decentralisation.

The Global Partnership for Social Accountability (GPSA) facility can also finance civil society groups directly—and has played an important role in everything from building better health systems in Ghana to improving education in Mauritania.

Grab opportunity

African leaders must grab this opportunity to push the World Bank to adapt and massively scale-up such bottom-up, citizen-centric accountability mechanisms—and push more broadly to mainstream citizen engagement in everything the bank does, both in relation to climate change and other development priorities.

This will require a renewal and significant strengthening its 10-year-old citizen engagement commitment and expanding funding and staffing of related activities. Bigger is not always better if it leaves people behind.

Kenya is also the co-chair of the Open Government Partnership (OGP), a large-scale effort across more than 75 countries and 150-plus local governments to co-create and translate commitments made by governments into action at the national and sub-national levels.

The Nairobi summit also brings together leaders from many OGP participating countries that have a central role to play in solving the continent’s challenges, including Nigeria, South Africa and Morocco.

African countries have made more than 600 commitments to open up their governments through OGP over the past decade or so, leading to critical reforms across the continent. In Nigeria, for example, a commitment to establish a public registry of company ownership now allows civil society to access data and identify potential compliance risks. The Seychelles delivered on its commitment to submit a comprehensive report to the Fisheries Transparency Initiative, becoming the first country to do so.

In Morocco, regional governments are using their OGP membership to, working with citizen groups, identify local priorities for transparency in local government spending. In Kenya, the government and civil society have a long history of co-creating reforms to deliver transparency in contracts and procurement, developing a national database of contracts that fully complies with the Open Contracting Data Standard.

These and many other efforts like them have improved the lives of citizens—bolstering revenue collection, opening up information and reinvigorating social contracts between citizens and their leaders. Donor governments have, in their pivot towards a localised model for development assistance, supported these efforts generously because they know that OGP has time and again proven itself to deliver tremendous returns on investment in terms of outcomes.

Strong position

Kenya, which will host a ministerial-level OGP regional meeting in late August, is in a strong position to connect the dots—domestically and across the continent—between IDA21 and tools like OGP that can ensure a central role for civil society in solving development challenges. Unless and until governments and civil society can align development efforts in ways that streamline decision-making for governments, reduce financial leakages and create shared outcomes, we will continue to disappoint the people that need support the most.

As the IDA21 host, the Kenyan government is expected to push for multi-stakeholder platforms like OGP to be central to World Bank decision-making; drive forwards a significant scale-up of space and financing for civil society organisations so that they can play the critical role needed in terms of the accountability of development finance; and adopt an ambitious systems-level approach to governance issues that will allow the bank and its allies and partners to fundamentally transform how African governments serve the people.

Kenya’s leadership on a host of international development efforts is commendable—and the Kenyan government can recognise the importance of quality and quantity of development finance. Civil society stands ready to work even harder after the IDA21 replenishment meetings to ensure governance across Africa becomes more open, fair and inclusive for everyone.

- Mr Glencorse is co-chair of the Open Government Partnership and co-CEO of Accountability Lab. @blairglencorse