(Last Updated: September 12, 2022)
What is IDA?
The World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) is one of the largest and most effective platforms for fighting extreme poverty in the world’s lowest income countries.
IDA works in 74 countries in Africa, East Asia & Pacific, South Asia, Europe & Central Asia, Latin America & Caribbean, and Middle East & North Africa.
IDA aims to reduce poverty by providing financing and policy advice for programs that boost economic growth, build resilience, and improve the lives of poor people around the world.
More than half of active IDA countries already receive all, or half, of their IDA resources on grant terms, which carry no repayments at all. Grants are targeted to low-income countries at higher risk of debt distress.
Over the past 62 years, IDA has provided about $458 billion for investments in 114 countries. IDA also has a strong track record in supporting countries through multiple crises.
How is IDA funded?
IDA partners and representatives from borrower countries come together every three years to replenish IDA funds and review IDA’s policies. The replenishment consists of contributions from IDA donors, the World Bank, and financing raised from the capital markets.
Since its founding in 1960, IDA has had 20 replenishment cycles. The current 20th cycle, known as IDA20, was replenished in December 2021. It took place one year earlier than scheduled to meet the unprecedented need brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic in developing countries.
The $93 billion IDA20 package was made possible by donor contributions from 52 high- and middle-income countries totaling $23.5 billion, with additional financing raised in the capital markets, repayments, and the World Bank’s own contributions.
What does the IDA20 program include?
IDA is a multi-issue institution and supports a range of development activities that pave the way toward equality, economic growth, job creation, higher incomes, and better living conditions.
To help IDA countries address multiple crises and restore their trajectories to the 2030 development agenda, IDA20 will focus on Building Back Better from the Crisis: Towards a Green, Resilient and Inclusive Future. The IDA20 cycle runs from July 1, 2022, to June 30, 2025.
IDA20 will be supported by five special themes:
Human Capital: Address the current crises and lay the foundations for an inclusive recovery. This theme will continue to help countries manage the pandemic through vaccination programs deployment, scaling up safety nets, and building strong and pandemic-ready health systems.
Climate: Raise the ambition to build back better and greener; scale up investments in renewable energy, resilience, and mitigation, while tackling issues like nature and biodiversity.
Gender: Scale up efforts to close social and economic gaps between women and men, boys and girls. It will address issues like economic inclusion, gender-based violence, childcare, and reinforcing women’s land rights.
Fragility, Conflict, and Violence (FCV): Address drivers of FCV, support policy reforms for refugees, and scale-up regional initiatives in the Sahel, Lake Chad, and Horn of Africa.
Jobs and Economic Transformation: Enable better jobs for more people through a green, resilient, and inclusive recovery. IDA20 will continue to address macroeconomic instability, support reforms and public investments, and focus on quality infrastructure, renewable energy, and inclusive urban development.
IDA20 will deepen recovery efforts by focusing on four cross-cutting issues:
Crisis Preparedness: Strengthen national systems that can be adapted quickly, and shock preparedness investments to increase country readiness (e.g., shock-responsive safety nets).
Debt Sustainability and Transparency: The Sustainable Development Finance Policy will continue to be key to support countries on debt sustainability, transparency, and management.
Governance and Institutions: Strengthen public institutions to create a conducive environment for a sustainable recovery. Reinforce domestic resource mobilization, digital development, and combat illicit financial flows.
Technology: Speed up digital transformation with the focus on digital infrastructure, skills, financial services, and businesses. Also address the risks of digital exclusion and support the creation of reliable, cyber secure data systems.
As part of the package, IDA20 expects to deliver the following results:
- essential health, nutrition, and population services for up to 430 million people,
- immunizations for up to 200 million children,
- social safety net programs to up to 375 million people,
- new/improved electricity service to up to 50 million people,
- access to clean cooking for 20 million people, and
- improved access to water sources to up to 20 million people.
What are some recent examples of IDA’s work?
Here are some recent examples of how IDA is empowering countries towards a resilient recovery:
Across Benin, Malawi, Cote D’Ivoire in Africa, and across South Asia, IDA is working with partners like the World Health Organization to finance vaccine purchase and deployment, and address hesitancy.
In West Africa, an Ebola-era disease surveillance project has prepared countries to face the COVID-19 health crisis.
In Tonga, IDA’s emergency funding allowed the government to respond to the eruption and Tsunami in January 2022. The project strengthened Tonga’s resilience to natural and climate-related risks by facilitating a significant reform of disaster risk management legislation.
In the Sahel, where climate change is compounding the impacts of COVID-19—IDA is setting up monitoring initiatives, strengthening existing early warning systems, and providing targeted responses to support the agro-pastoral sectors.
In Yemen, IDA provides critical facilities backed by solar systems to more than 3.2 million people – 51 percent female – including water, educational services, and health care.
In Bangladesh, IDA helped restart the immunization of children under 12 months after the lockdown due to the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020. It enabled the country to vaccinate 28,585 children in 2020 and 25,864 in 2021 in the camps for the displaced Rohingya people.
Across Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, and Niger, IDA’s response helped two million people benefit through cash transfers and food vouchers for basic food needs. Some 30,000 vulnerable farmers received digital coupons to access seeds and fertilizers, and 73,500 people, of which 32,500 were women, were provided temporary jobs through land restoration activities.
Last Updated: Sep 12, 2022