Doing and expanding business in Sub-Saharan Africa by multilateral development banks – selected evaluation insights

This note highlights key evidence-based lessons from independent evaluation reports on multilateral development banks (MDBs)’ operations in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), a region of possible, limited and incremental expansion for the EBRD. To this end, the EBRD’s Independent Evaluation Department (EvD) conducted an in-depth screening of 40 independent evaluation reports, focused predominantly on private rather than public sector operations, that have been published over the last decade by the African Development Bank (AfDB), the European Investment Bank (EIB), the International Finance Corporation (IFC) , the World Bank (WB) and the Development Finance Institutions’ (DFI) Working Group. This body of evidence was further substantiated by seven independent evaluation reports produced by EvD that touched upon recent experiences from the EBRD’s expansion to Mongolia (2006), SEMED (2011) and West Bank and Gaza (2017). A range of operational and strategic themes that emerged were then distilled into a non-exhaustive list of seven lessons. These lessons are applicable at any stage of an MDB’s engagement in the SSA region, whether prior to its expansion or while already on the ground.