MASERU - The World Bank Group, a unique global partnership fighting poverty worldwide through sustainable solutions, is currently preparing a new Country Partnership Framework (CPF) jointly with the Government of Lesotho.
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Nov. 12, 2021
NEO SENOKO
3 min read
New World Bank, Lesotho partnership on cards
David Malpass, World Bank Group President
Story highlights
The aim is to support Lesotho in building a sustainable and resilient economy in a post-COVID-19 environment by promoting a private sector
The CPF is the central tool for the World Bank and Lesotho for guiding programmes and gauging their effectiveness. It builds on the country’s development programmes and articulates a results-based engagement.
The CPF is founded on three key elements of government’s development priorities – including assessment of key development challenges and opportunities to progress towards twin goals as well as the self-assessment of the World Bank’s comparative advantage.
“The CPF will outline the Group’s strategic support in Lesotho for the period 2022-26. It will also be aligned to the country’s development agenda as outlined in the country’s National Strategic Development Plan (NSDP II).
“The aim is to support Lesotho in building a sustainable and resilient economy in a post-COVID-19 environment by promoting a private sector driven and export-oriented economy for job creation supported by enabling efficient and effective public sector,” the World Bank Group President, David Malpass said in a concept note released this week.
Every two years during the implementation of the CPF, or at midterm, a Performance and Learning Review (PLR) is prepared to summarise progress in implementing the CPF programme.
At the end of every CPF period, a Completion and Learning Review (CLR) assesses the programme performance using the results framework set out in the most recent Performance and Learning Review (PLR).
The CPF provides an opportunity to engage with various stakeholder groups which help the World Bank to validate or re-orient their portfolio to support the evolving country developmental priorities.
Stakeholders include government, private sector, youth, women, academia, civil society, development partners, media and the general public. While the previous programme failed to live up to its expectation, the World Bank has plans to overcome these challenges in the next programme.
The previous one was focused on two strategic areas of improving efficiency and effectiveness of the public sector and promoting private sector job creation. Its objectives were shaped by a series of consultations with key stakeholders including government, development partners and civil society organizations and the private sector. But, the World Bank has revealed that results were not as expected.
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“The previous CPF focused on national level systematic issues that included social protection and nationwide projects that included the SADP I and II as well as the development of industrial zones for private sector projects,” the World Bank added.
Challenges, however, have been many, and development outcomes have not changed substantially since 2015. Most binding constraints identified in the first program remain valid with slow progress in addressing them.
The weak development, performance reflects gaps in implementation. In most cases, the laws, policies and institutions that are meant to support the efficient and effective delivery of development outcomes exist, but are often not well implemented or distorted.
With the next initiative and to overcome challenges, the Group intends to focus more on project implementation for impact through applying lagging region approaches with greater civic engagement and applying a political economy lens through a governance facility for project preparation and implementation, among other things.
Furthermore, the Group will leverage success from the previous CPF implementation, including digital transformation as well as look into the Prime Minister’s delivery unit to accelerate private sector development and results-based financing, among other areas.
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