World Bank Group strategy continues to position SMEs as key vehicles to promote employment, value chain development, economic and social inclusion, and resilience in the face of fragility and conflict. This note synthesizes findings regarding SMEs and SME support from recent IEG evaluations,...

More than a decade has passed since the global economic and financial crisis rocked the world. A clear lesson that emerged from it was the importance of identifying and addressing country-specific vulnerabilities ex ante to build resilience when a shock occurs. The 2020 global economic and...

Cities will be home to 2 billion new residents by 2045, and the pressure to develop land in and around cities is growing. This will pose a great challenge to lower-income cities since they tend to grow through slums and other informal settlements. Slum residents have inadequate and inequitable...

Many of the world's poor people depend on natural resources for their well-being. Four-fifths of the world's poor people live in rural areas, and most rural poor people depend on natural resources for their livelihoods. The renewable natural resources on which poor people depend are increasingly...

Disruptive and transformative technologies (DTT) have far-reaching implications for development. Traditional development models are being disrupted by the accelerating pace of technological change and the convergence of multiple technologies, among other things. Recognizing the implications of...

IEG's Country Program Evaluation (CPE) covers the period FY05-13. The period spans three World Bank Group country strategies and one progress report. It also covers the last years of the Ben Ali regime and the transition to a new political dispensation following the revolution of January 2011....

The World Bank Group's success rests on its ability to help its client countries achieve the development outcomes they desire. This demands a strong outcome orientation at the country-level, defined as the Bank Group's ability to generate feedback on what works, what does not, and why, use this...

This first-of-its-kind evaluation assesses the scope of the World Bank Group's convening power and how effectively it is deployed. The report finds that the Bank Group's comparative advantages give it strong convening power that it uses on many development issues. In so doing, it meets the...

The Clean Energy Transition-the pathway for decarbonizing global energy-is essential to foster inclusive and sustainable growth while addressing climate change. Based on EIA forecasts, IEG estimates that annual global financing for RE needs to double, from USD 300 billion to USD 600 billion...