Devex Newswire: Ajay Banga’s challenge at the Spring Meetings 2024

It’s IMF-World Bank week in Washington, D.C., and we have a team on the ground to bring you the latest and greatest from the world of finance — and beyond.

Also in today’s edition: A Devex exclusive on the U.N.’s fear of blowback if it collaborates with the Israel Defense Forces on America’s humanitarian pier.

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Springs forward

The International Monetary Fund-World Bank Spring Meetings (or Springs, as they’re commonly called) are not just a time for finance wonks to meet, mingle, and make deals. They’ve become a showcase and temperature check of global development writ large.

It makes sense. Countries can’t develop without money. And too many lower-income countries don’t have enough cash in the face of a seemingly impregnable wall of crises — or they’re caving under the weight of owing too much.

World Bank President Ajay Banga has pledged that his 80-year-old institution will have greater scale, impact, speed, and simplicity. That all sounds great, but what exactly does it mean? Devex contributor Sophie Edwards has a detailed breakdown of Banga’s promises and progress — not to mention the flood of mostly unsolicited advice he’s received.

Much of that advice boils down to one constant: move faster and be bolder to meet the moment.

“Movements are happening in the multilateral development banks but they need to happen faster. The World Bank is still a very inward-focused institution,” Rachel Kyte of Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government said during a media briefing. “Ajay Banga needs to move from rhetoric to execution.”

Banga is trying to do just that, hoping to demonstrate that the bank has made headway in its so-called evolution road map during these slimmed-down Spring Meetings, whose core program this year will span just three days instead of the usual five. Among the topics to be discussed are fundraising for the lowest-income countries; financial measures to boost lending; a focus on global public goods like climate change; a new score card; and “fixing the plumbing” of internal bank operations, as Banga likes to say.

It’s all part of Banga’s efforts to build a “better bank.” But what about the “bigger bank” he’s alluded to before? That would entail a capital increase — an infusion of money from shareholders — something the bank has been conspicuously silent about leading up to the Springs.

Read: What to expect at the World Bank Spring Meetings 2024

Related: Everything you need to know about the World Bank's reform plans (Pro)

+ Want to get smart about World Bank reforms in just 20 minutes? Join Devex Senior Reporter Adva Saldinger as she talks to a variety of stakeholders for a special series of podcasts starting this week. Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or search “Devex” in your favorite podcast app, and stay tuned for more episodes.

Pier-ing into the abyss

The United States has been pressuring U.N. agencies to deliver lifesaving humanitarian assistance to Gaza via a yet-to-be-constructed maritime pier — but the U.N. is resisting that pressure, fearing the appearance of collaborating with the Israel Defense Forces could compromise the world body’s neutrality.

Martin Griffiths, the U.N. emergency relief coordinator, convened a Zoom meeting with the heads of U.N. relief agencies — including the World Food Programme, UNICEF, World Health Organization, and the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees — to discuss the situation. He raised concern about the impact of the U.S. and Israel’s plans on the perception of U.N. neutrality, my colleague Colum Lynch scoops.

“The UN welcomes all efforts to increase the amount and type of aid delivered for the people of Gaza, whether by air, sea or, most importantly, land,” he said in a statement issued after the meeting. “We trust that no effort will be spared to ensure that aid reaches those who need it across the Gaza Strip, including in the north, that the safety of our aid workers and of civilians remains paramount, and that the independence of our operations is maintained.”

In addition to wanting to maintain that independence, the U.N. has other reservations about the pier. For one thing, it’s located near the southern part of Gaza and not in the north, where famine is imminent. For another, senior U.N. aid officials have been skeptical about the need for a maritime corridor, noting that the crisis can be best addressed by accelerating the delivery of food, medicines, fuel, and other goods through land routes.

“But apparently there is definitely a lot of pressure underway with the Americans hitting us up at the highest level to get us to play ball,” one official tells Colum.

Exclusive: UN says US Gaza pier plan compromises its neutrality

ICYMI: Aid groups doubt Biden's pier will solve Gaza's problems (Pro)

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EIB aggressive

The European Investment Bank is taking the controversial leap into much greater financing of the defense industry — but the move is a compromise unlikely to fully satisfy hawks in the European Commission and Parliament, my colleague Rob Merrick tells me.

A meeting of EU finance ministers agreed to “update” EIB rules by removing the requirement that investments in dual-use items and technologies — such as surveillance, military mobility, border control, and drones — must be primarily for civilian use.

More small companies and startups will receive funding, while a “task force” and a “one-stop shop” will streamline access to an existing €6 billion ($6.4 billion) pot for dual-use projects. The shift is enough to draw the fire of the Brussels-based campaign group Counter Balance, which protested that the EIB is abandoning its “core mission” of development in favor of greater “exposure to the military industry, which increases the risk of conflict escalation.”

However, the change will not cross the Rubicon of rewriting the rulebook to lift the ban on investing in “ammunition and weapons” — which is what the Commission and Parliament wanted when they called on the EIB to “support production of military equipment.”

EU member states are unwilling to go that far, possibly fearing the impact on the bank’s prized sky-high environmental, social, and governance standing and credit rating — the key to raising finance cheaply.

Notably, the EIB’s announcement, which must be rubber-stamped by its board of directors in May, stressed the importance of “safeguarding its financing capacity.”

ICYMI: ‘Critical moment’ as EIB wrestles over move into weapons financing

Back to Skoll

Why is it that The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria enjoys passionate support from nonprofits? The agency's executive director, Peter Sands, was asked that during the closing plenaries of the Skoll World Forum, the international gathering for social innovators that concluded Friday in Oxford.

The question came amid a conference filled with anger at the U.N., big INGOs, and major donors. Many of Skoll's delegates are smaller nonprofits that are deeply dispirited that kind words around localization haven't turned into action.

Sands had a clear message: The Global Fund involves civil society organizations in its governance structures, offering them three times the seats on the board that the U.S. gets.

“People say ‘How do you get [civil society] to be advocates on your behalf,’” he told the conference. “And I say it's simple. How many seats do civil society organizations have on your board?”

But Sands was just the warm-up act for the star attraction: actor George Clooney and his wife Amal, a lawyer who has prosecuted war criminals. They were there partly to sprinkle a little stardust on 1,500 delegates fatigued by four days of networking, but also to speak about the Clooney Foundation for Justice, which offers legal support to people targeted by their governments — including journalist Maria Ressa, who headlined last year’s Skoll World Forum and who faces several questionable charges in her native Philippines.

+ Download your copy of our newly updated report on the localization agenda, which tracks USAID’s and global development leaders’ localization progress since the start of the decade.

In other news

The U.S. and Canada have pledged $100 million and 132 million Canadian dollars, respectively, ahead of today’s international conference on Sudan hosted by France. [Reuters and Times Colonist]

U.K. charities will launch legal challenges to the legislation declaring Rwanda a “safe” country for asylum-seekers and refugees, which is expected to pass Parliament this week. [BBC]

Some 55 million people in West and Central Africa will face food insecurity in the coming months due to double-digit inflation driving up food prices in those regions, U.N. agencies warn. [Al Jazeera]

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