An Independent Review of World Bank Support to ... - DAG Ethiopia

5. Bank and Borrower Performance5.1 In general, the changes to the Bank’s involvement in capacity building activitiesover time have to a large extent been determined by the Government’s approach tocapacity building and the role it wished the Bank to play. This is reflected in the limitedBank involvement in civil service reform during the 1990s, the learning-by-doingapproach to capacity building within the three large sector development programs, andthe limited Government interest in the PER work. Similarly, the recent shift in Bankstrategy and approved operations in support of capacity building is largely a result of theGovernment’s change in its approach to capacity building and its view of the Bank’spotential role as core financier and coordinator of support from the donor community.Overall, the performance of both the Bank and the borrower is marginally satisfactory.5.2 The table below indicates OED ratings of Bank and borrower performance for theimplementation of projects as a whole, not for capacity building per se. Althoughcapacity building was not an explicit objective of most of these projects, capacitybuilding activities represented over a third of total commitments.Table 5.1: OED Evaluation of Bank and Borrower PerformanceProject Bank Performance Borrower PerformanceSeventh Education Project Unsatisfactory UnsatisfactoryFamily Health Project Satisfactory SatisfactoryRoads Rehabilitation Project Satisfactory SatisfactoryERRP, Roads Component Highly Satisfactory Highly SatisfactoryStructural Adjustment Credit Satisfactory SatisfactoryEconomic Rehabilitation Adjustment Cr. Satisfactory SatisfactoryEthiopia Structural Adjustment Credit Satisfactory Satisfactory5.3 Across sectors, the Bank’s performance has been strongest in roads and weakestin education. In the roads sector, Bank performance has been strong in almost all aspects,although supervision related to capacity building activities under the RSDPSP wasinadequate due to failure to foresee and address completion and sustainability issues oftwo capacity building components aimed at the organizational level. As a result, oneactivity came to an early halt and was rescued by another donor, while the othercomponent built an institution, which at the end of Bank support produced outputs notused by others than the donor community and was on the verge of collapse with thedeparture of the TA team and their financial resources. Largely these were design errorsnot mitigated during implementation.5.4 The weaker performance in the education sector reflects OED’s overall projectratings of the Education VII Project as unsatisfactory as well as the Bank’s failure toensure that capacity building issues were adequately addressed in the final design of theGovernment’s ESDP during project preparation and negotiations (and therefore in thedesign of Bank support). Even with a ‘learning-by-doing’ approach by the Government30