Policy-based guarantees (PBGs) have long been a multilateral development bank (MDB) instrument in search of a purpose. PBGs—a credit enhancement for sovereign market borrowing—have been around for decades but their uptake has been limited. In most instances, they have proven remarkably effective in ...

DFC has been the subject of a growing list of proposals from lawmakers that envision the agency tackling a wider range of challenges than initially envisioned. The agency may find ways to leverage this heightened interest. However, delivering on the bipartisan, foundational vision for DFC amid evolv...

The World Bank and other multilateral development banks are historically underutilized assets when it comes to USAID’s development objectives across a wide range of sectors and initiatives. We offer instead a set of recommendations that USAID could implement largely within its own purview, or with a...

At a time when governments seem able to agree on very little, the consensus around the Bank’s need to scale up its engagement on climate and other global public goods is striking. But “scaling up ambition” is vague, and there remains a great deal of work to do to pin down what it means in practice f...

On the heels of last year’s landmark $93 billion replenishment of the World Bank’s IDA—and with the international community preoccupied with responding to Ukraine—the replenishment of the African Development Fund cannot be an afterthought.

The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set ambitious targets for high-quality, universal education by 2030. But existing efforts to “cost the SDGs” return unattainable price tags. In this chapter, we first review approaches to costing the SDGs in the education sector.

In 2021, Ghana announced a plan to issue sovereign bonds of up to $2 billion, with proceeds due partially to fund a free secondary school program. Just months later, Ghana’s rising debt burden means this is no longer feasible. Can developing countries tap the social bond market in order to fund publ...