The World Bank Group in Chad, Fiscal Years 2010–20 : Country Program Evaluation

This Country Program Evaluation (CPE) assesses the World Bank Group's development effectiveness in Chad over the past decade within a context of high fragility and extreme poverty. The report covers the implementation of the Interim Strategy N...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Independent Evaluation Group
Format: Working Paper
Language:English
en_US
Published: Washington, DC : World Bank 2022
Subjects:
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099524106282224769/IDU0a21585f204cfd045e50896a093801bc4db85
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37678
Description
Summary:This Country Program Evaluation (CPE) assesses the World Bank Group's development effectiveness in Chad over the past decade within a context of high fragility and extreme poverty. The report covers the implementation of the Interim Strategy Note (2010–12) and the Country Partnership Framework (16–20). This CPE draws lessons to inform the design and implementation of the next partnership strategy with Chad. IEG finds that World Bank Group's support to Chad was aligned with government priorities and World Bank diagnostics. Bank Group support helped advance several human development objectives. It especially increased access to health services, primary and secondary education, and social protection in targeted areas as well as gender equality. Notwithstanding the challenges inherent in working in a fragile and conflict-affected situation, the performance of the Bank Group portfolio in Chad was weak. Timely budget support helped stave off an imminent fiscal crisis but did not achieve sustained reform. Few results were achieved in agriculture, infrastructure, and public resource management. Overall, performance was undermined by procurement delays, high turnover of government counterparts, and a lack of continuity in World Bank staff working on Chad. The following three lessons are offered for consideration. First, timely and targeted analytical work is necessary to inform priority setting, policy dialogue, and the design of reforms. Given the prevalence of capacity and absorptive constraints, it is essential to strategically prioritize analytical work to help identify and understand the most binding constraints to development gains and inform efforts to address them. Second, procurement challenges warrant greater attention to address the underlying political and bureaucratic obstacles, which will require a higher-level dialogue with the government. Lastly, although working in Chad is challenging, it is critical to strengthen incentives to attract and retain talent. This is needed to improve continuity of engagement with country authorities and compensate for weak client capacity, including the high turnover of government officials.