Anna Bjerde: Country compacts are a 'game-changer' for World Bank

The World Bank’s Anna Bjerde has embarked on a multicountry tour spanning Nigeria, Angola, Ethiopia, and Saudi Arabia — a trip that comes as several of the bank’s flagship initiatives in Africa move from planning to execution. Bjerde is the bank’s managing director of operations. This trip comes just a few months after she traveled to four other African countries, underscoring how central the continent — and especially job creation — has become to her portfolio, she said. In the conversation with Devex, Bjerde — recently recognized on Devex’s Power 50 list of the most powerful figures in international development — discussed what an inaugural platform meeting on the Lobito Corridor, a rail and road network linking mineral-rich regions of Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo to Angola’s Atlantic coast, could unlock for cross-border connectivity. That meeting is taking place in Angola, the second stop in her Africa tour. She also explains how the World Bank’s new model of country-owned compacts, including those underpinning its massive African electrification plan, Mission 300, is becoming a template for how the institution works, and how it aims to ensure it is helping, not hurting, countries facing debt distress. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Nigeria was the first stop on this tour, where your trip focused on macrofiscal reforms. But zooming out, what are you hoping to advance in Angola, Saudi Arabia, and Ethiopia? The Lobito Corridor comprises Angola, DRC, and Zambia. It is one of many corridors in the region. And what’s exciting about this one, like all corridors, is that we think about them as transport corridors, but they’re actually economic corridors. So what’s exciting about the Lobito Corridor is the amount of jobs it can create, the amount of improvements in exports and imports, and the economic transformation that can happen along the corridor in secondary, tertiary cities that also touch upon the increase in livelihoods incomes for the people in the region. And then Saudi Arabia will actually not be disconnected to Africa, because I will meet with the Islamic Development Bank, which is a big partner for us, as well as the OPEC fund. And then heading back to Ethiopia, where we will continue to talk about the many flagships we’re working on, but also water, because the African Union has declared 2026 as the year of water. We have a new water strategy and implementation plan. What will the inaugural Lobito Corridor meeting entail? We see a lot of potential. But right now, the connectivity bringing Zambia and DRC into this corridor that’s been developing in Angola is insufficient. The first thing we’re going to do is, under the leadership of the president of Angola, have this first meeting, which brings together the ministers of transport, trade, and finance from the three countries [Angola, DRC, and Zambia]. So we’ll have nine ministers. We will bring development partners that are interested and have shown interest. And we’re going to discuss three to four key priorities. One is, what are the most important investments that need to happen, both for the corridor itself, whether it's railway or road — but also equally important, the corridor investments in urbanization, in agriculture, in infrastructure, in and along the corridor. The second thing is the very important issue around trade facilitation and border crossings. Because if you have the infrastructure and you’re not working to make sure things can move smoothly, then you defeat the purpose of the infrastructure. There’s a lot of work to be done there between the countries to facilitate that. The third is to agree on the diagnostics that we all need to have to be able to make good investment decisions. There’s been a lot of work looking at various options. And the fourth is capacity building and technical assistance. There’s been an agency created among the three countries, which is great, and they need a lot of support to be able to operationalize. The World Bank Group was asked by the three countries to convene. And we’ll see how we do this going forward. But we expect regular meetings, maybe on a quarterly basis. Turning to Mission 300, the World Bank’s plan to connect 300 million people in Africa to electricity by 2030, what progress are you seeing? I’m very pleased to share that our new number of connected people is just shy of 39 million. The last few months have seen a huge bump. And it’s thanks to this escalation and acceleration of both implementation and new projects. A lot of it, frankly, thanks to IDA [International Development Association] coming in, which has been so helpful, both the last year of IDA 20 and the first year of IDA 21. [And thanks to our partners.] One very prominent and new bilateral supporter is Italy, under the Mattei Plan. I haven’t seen a bilateral donor move as fast as we’ve seen Italy move in the last year to partner with us in Africa. And I’m happy to come back because we’re also doing a lot of work on agriculture and on water now, with Italy. And it’s all helped by the fact that we have 30 compacts now, and these compacts are country-owned. And the compact design is also now spilling over to AgriConnect and water, where we’re also using the compact approach. How did this compact model emerge, and why has it been so effective? The best way to support the countries is that they themselves come up with their plans to close the access gap, because some of them were starting at very low levels of access, and some of them were actually more last-mile. The compacts are a game-changer, which is why, on AgriConnect, we’re looking to launch close to 40 compacts over the next few weeks. And the water strategy also uses the concept of compacts. Is it safe to say that this approach is becoming something of a model for your work? The health care coverage initiative by the World Bank — 1.5 billion people by 2030 to be provided with either improved or even just from scratch health care — also uses compacts. And that was launched in Tokyo in December. We do believe it’s a very practical, country-led, country-owned, tangible way of working together and prioritizing what needs to be done. What are your ambitions on water, and what are you hoping to advance at the AU Summit next week? Water, of course, is the next big thing. We’re concerned about water at many levels and therefore created this new strategy; created an implementation plan. We will use the AU Summit — which is convenient because there’s recognition around water this year — and we will have a side event to introduce how we’re approaching the WASH agenda more broadly. We have a very ambitious program we’re launching at the AU summit for eastern [and] southern Africa, but it’s equally relevant to West and Central Africa. And we hope to bring heads of states to champion it, and we already have expressed interest for this. We hope to bring ministers of water from all the countries to exchange on lessons learned. Ultimately, this also will result in work programs across the region. Again, we are using the compact approach. We have a lot of development partners interested in this. Of course, the African Development Bank is so important in the region, but also bilateral donors. Italy has a strong interest in the water sector, and we look forward to working also with the European institutions, with African institutions, with Gulf institutions around this. Many of these initiatives involve large-scale investment at a time when debt burdens remain a pressing concern across the continent. What should people think about big infrastructure and transformation projects alongside debt sustainability? The debt is a very, very serious issue facing many, many countries on the continent, and it’s a very, very high-priority point. Helping countries who are dealing with debt management issues, even if they’re not at risk of debt distress or in debt distress, we try to work early on. And we do analytics, and we really look at what can be done. There’s a couple of fundamentals that are important in order for countries to be able to meet their debt obligations, of course. One is that they have economic growth, because economic growth lifts the overall economy, generates income, attracts investment, helps them also on domestic resource mobilization. It’s also about looking at what kind of debt and for what. We very much work with countries, looking at efficient expenditures. So, is this project worth taking on, yes or no? Does it need public finance, yes or no? If it brings in the private sector, what’s the risk allocation between public and private? Does it present contingent liabilities for the governments going forward? If so, how do they need to take that into account in their debt reporting and debt management strategies? And of course, we ourselves look at two very important things for countries that are very, very high on debt levels. One is we make sure what we call net positive in our flows, meaning they never owe us more than we provide to them. And that’s something I’m very happy that for all African countries we have net positive flows. And for countries that do go into a debt distress and debt treatment type of phase, we kick into grants. So we don’t burden them with debt anymore. They can use the time they need to restructure their debt, come out on the other side, create a new space. And in the meantime, the World Bank should be helping, not hurting.