16th Meeting of Senior Fellowships Officers of the ... - Development

Operational Issues 35
lic sector. 2) Besides the Regular Programme, the World Bank ran eleven Partnership
Programmes in 2006: two in the United States, five in Japan and four in Africa. In the
latter, the Partnership Programmes played an important role in the capacity-building
of the partner university. Two programmes were in English-speaking countries and two
in French-speaking ones.
118. Mr. Shibata assessed that after having sponsored over the past twenty years 3600 fellows
who had gained in-depth knowledge and academic degrees, the programme realized
that it had not tapped enough of that knowledge. Therefore, the scaling up project
started. Its main objective was to leverage the extensive network of scholars through
capturing new knowledge and insights developed by scholars during their graduate
studies and development experiences in a more systematic way. The project would promote
knowledge by providing opportunities for scholars to share new knowledge and
by creating opportunities for them and alumni to interact with each other. It would
also facilitate life-long knowledge exchange and relationship-building with development
practitioners. The scaling up project required from all fellows to turn in their
final papers. In an annual competition, the best thesis was acknowledged with a modest
monetary award and the opportunity for the fellow to present it at the regional conferences.
The best papers were to be published annually, and whenever possible, included
in World Bank operations or World Bank Institute capacity-building programmes.
Further ideas outlined by Mr. Shibata included the possibility to pair scholars with
others who were working on similar reforms; to hold workshops at the World Bank
where JJ/WBGSP interns at the WB and IMF could interact with development professionals;
to turn the JJ/WBGSP website into an interactive platform and to invite
scholars to WBI’s organizational learning courses as participants or guest speakers. A
fellowship network should be enhanced by linking scholars with each other and with
practitioners using the Bank’s websites in the area of policy formulation and implementation.
Regional seminars should facilitate knowledge sharing among current scholars
and alumni to discuss development topics. Alumni associations should continue to be
established. Currently alumni were established with a focal alumnus in 16 countries.
119. Mr. Shibata insisted that in such initiatives it was important to measure success. The
key performance indicators (KPI) for the programme were the number of scholars, the
number of high quality papers produced, the number of research proposals by alumni
funded by outside sources and success stories of high-achievers. He enumerated the
advantages of scaling up. Firstly, it allowed the continuation of learning and knowledge
sharing. Secondly, it created an active network of alumni around the world who would
be able to contribute effectively to global issues. Thirdly, it extended beyond individual
training to capacity-building at the organizational and societal levels. The fourth advantage
was the process of selecting the best papers which provided useful feedback to
universities on quality and subject matter and thereby assisted in building capacities.
120. Two regional conferences were held in May 2006 in Nairobi and in Hanoi. Alumni heard
outstanding papers presented by scholars and took the opportunity to network, share